The Impact of Nursing Informatics on Patient Outcomes and Patient Care Efficiencies
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NursingInformaticsProjectProposal..docxRunning head: NURSING INFORMATICS PROJECT PROPOSAL 1
NURSING INFORMATICS PROJECT PROPOSAL 7
Nursing Informatics Project Proposal
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Institution
Nursing Informatics Project Proposal
At the psychiatric and mental health facility, nurses experience challenges related to relapses of patients’ negative behavioral pattern after conclusion of their therapy durations. This is attributable to lack of elaborate mechanisms for patient follow-up and integrating patients into their own care to promote self-care in mental healthcare and personal behavior tracking (Cohen, Keller, Hayes, Dorr, Ash & Sittig, 2016). In several instances nurses utilize the usual therapy techniques to assist patients recover from mental health issues, such as cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). Although these techniques have been proven as effective in metal health problems treatment, patients who are recovering from addictive behaviors are often faced with the risk for relapse into negative behavior patterns and mental health problems. To this end, it is essential for the mental health facility to incorporate into its nursing informatics system a mechanism for encouraging self-care and personal behavior tracking through integrated patient generated health data systems (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017). Through this strategy, the mental health facility can integrate patients’ smartphones, apps, and wearable devices to collect data about several patient aspects such as depressive symptoms and feelings, inner emotional conflicts that lead to relapse of addictive behaviors, missed medication, keeping track of personal appointments, and enhanced communication with mental health providers.
This project is valuable as it will enable nurses to achieve the goal of involving patients in their own care through gathering useful data that can facilitate improved mental healthcare delivery. The goal of integration of patient generated mental health data is to enable mental health nurses and professionals to obtain valuable data (Cohen et al., 2016). Mental health professionals can have increased access to patient generated mental health data and obtain an in-depth understanding about patient mental health condition, home health situation, and allow for addition of patient generated lifestyle information and data to nurses’ diagnostics to enable provision of more accurate treatments and reduced recovery periods. This is because the goal of mental health nursing is to reduce relapse of mental health issues significantly. With patient generated mental health data, nurses can offer mental patients with enhanced tools for self-care in the home environment and facilitate improved quality of life and mental health. Patient generated health data although not widely adopted in mental health nursing helps to improve areas such as patient engagement, research, and mental healthcare delivery (Lai, Hsueh, Choi & Austin, 2017). This is enabled by the fact that patients, their families, and care givers can autonomously capture data and seamlessly transmit it to several mental health providers in real time from any location.
Project Stakeholders
Project stakeholders include the mental health facility since the project will be implemented in the facility. The mental health facility leadership and management is expected to offer approval and financial support to facilitate effective design and implementation of the project. Organizations that offer support to mental health patients within the community are a key stakeholder in the project due to their crucial role of providing extra psychosocial support to mental health patients within the community. Patients their families and caregivers are important stakeholders in this project (Lai et al., 2017). This is because patients will be expected to provide the required data through their smart phones and wearable devices. They will also benefit from mental health nurses’ rapid response to their mental health issues and better patient engagement. As project end users, nurses are key and relevant stakeholders. They will obtain vital data about patients’ mental health issues form information and data gathered through the wearable devices, will effectively engage in research and utilize data and information to develop improved mental healthcare interventions and protocols. Nursing informaticists will offer guidance and directions about how to integrate electronic health records, standardized mental health nursing terminology, mental health nursing interventions, and patients’ devices in order to capture required data in the electronic health records (Lai et al., 2017). They will work collaboratively with the information systems specialists to ensure that the system functions as it is intended to function and that end users can effectively interact with its interface to capture, store and retrieve important patient data.
Other psychiatric units and hospitals, where patients seek mental and other health services will be stakeholders due to data and information sharing aspects. Health providers and professionals who work closely with mental health nurses such as psychiatrists, pharmacists, and social workers are important stakeholders because of their various role in medical treatments and psychosocial support within the community (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017). Stakeholders will be required to provide immense input into their expected opportunities for utilization of this type of a system in mental health nursing and challenges that may arise and strategies for mitigating effects of these challenges.
Project Outcomes
This goal of this project is to enable mental health patients to become involved in their care through self-care. Nurses will be able to offer real time counseling and education to patients, which will improve patient engagement and eliminate barriers that prevent effective nurse patient communication. It will empower patients to resolve identified problems associated with their mental health well-being to ascertain sustained positive mental health outcomes (Cohen et al., 2016). for instance patients will be offered strategies and approaches to deal with depressive symptoms and negative feelings that may lead to resorting to drug and substance abuse. Additionally, nurses will be able to identify specific trends and issues about mental health care form data and information provided through wearable devices and smart phones. They will be able to deduce how different interventions work for different mental health issues and with various demographic groups.
Enhanced patient engagement through frequent communication with patients will allow nurses to maintain an improved patient tracking to ensure sustainable and long-lasting mental health outcomes. Hence, this project will facilitate nurses to engage in big data use to develop tailored and customized mental health nursing interventions to patients according to their health issues and available resources (Cohen et al., 2016). The project will enable mental health practitioners and nurses reduce healthcare costs associated with increased rebounds mental health issues as well as utilize health resources effectively and prioritize to address mental health issues according to their urgency. Improved communication with patients will enable nurses and other mental health providers to identify care gaps caused by care fragmentation and missed care or interventions. Electronic patient generated health data will complement existing mental health data and seal information gaps to offer an integrated perspective of patients’ ongoing mental health.
Required Technologies
The required technologies are smart phones, mental health management apps, mental health problems monitoring devices, and other wearable devices, which can be integrated with EHR and allow for data transmission and communication (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017). Other technologies include computer hardware and software technologies to facilitate system’s utilization and function, and nursing informatics software related to electronic health records for data capture. The systems will need internet connectivity to facilitate communication and data transmission.
Project Team by Roles
The project team will include a mental health nurse whose role is to ensure that proper mental health nursing terminologies are incorporated in the system. In addition, Information specialists’ roles will involve building a prototype system for pilot testing with nurses to ensure that the system functions effectively. From the prototype system, the information systems specialists, in collaboration with the nurse informaticists will evaluate nurses’ feedback to identify system shortfalls or areas for improvement (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017). They will collaboratively evaluate the system to upgrade it or remove undesirable system elements to certify that all crucial mental health aspects and incorporation of patient devices are taken into consideration. This will ensure its usability to both nurses and patients. The project will include a project manager who will ascertain that the overall goals of the project are achieved within the stipulated timelines. A project manager will coordinate the entire project team and assist the health facility to examine the cost benefit analysis of the project prior to embarking on its implementation.
References
Cohen, D. J., Keller, S. R., Hayes, G. R., Dorr, D. A., Ash, J. S., & Sittig, D. F. (2016). Lessons learned from project health design. JMIR Human factors, 3(2). 26-27.
McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2017). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
