Assignment week 4 - Additional detail

Nursing Informatics and Patient Outcomes and Care Efficiencies

Ariel Cordova Lopez

Walden University

N6051: Transforming Healthcare Through Information Technology

Dr. Karen Robson DNP, RN-BC, RAC-CT

March 27, 2021

Nursing Informatics and Patient Outcomes and Care Efficiencies

Introduction

Information technology has changed nursing landscape and how the profession is moving in the current time. Nursing informatics is slowly revolutionizing healthcare, where capabilities to offer remote care has been implemented, while making patient integration in health delivery. Informatics has enabled the nurses to identify new healthcare risks and develop early interventions before they become public health concerns by controlling them on time. Adoption of nursing informatics in healthcare will transform the nursing profession and lead to better patient outcomes. Nursing informatics makes the healthcare patient based, more patient integration, and better patient outcomes. This project proposal highlights the impact of nursing informatics on patient outcomes by ensuring the preferred plan of care is accessible and all patient needs are accommodated.

Project

The project proposes a more system integrated approach for improving patient symptoms, illnesses that correspond to patient symptoms, and offering the appropriate plan of care. This will improve patient care making it easier to maneuver and ensure care systems are tracked within and without the healthcare system. Operating bedside nurses will be able to update details on patients with low probability of making errors, which will lead to better healthcare services availed to patients whenever needed. In addition, information sharing is made it easier as different nurses attend to patients, thus communication among the nurses will be improved. By adopting nursing informatics, patient care is made the primary concern within a healthcare facility which will lead to better care quality and better patient outcomes (Ariosto et al., 2018).

Stakeholders Impacted

The project will have a direct impact on all the stakeholders within the hospital setting. Each department in a healthcare facility has various stakeholders and structure of management, all of which are integrated to a facility system that work towards the same goal; of improving healthcare services to their customers. These stakeholders include nurses, hospital managers, doctors, pharmaceuticals, and the patients. All the hospital stakeholders will need to hold a meeting and discuss the viability of this project and how their individual departments will be impacted, as well as the overall hospital. Hospital leadership will then arrive at the final decision because they have a final say when such matters arise.

The work of the physicians will be highly simplified because they give prescriptions based on symptoms presented by the patient. Besides, the chances making errors when giving prescriptions will be highly reduced on the part of both nurses and pharmacists if this project is implemented (Kinnunen et al., 2019). The project impacts the quality of care given to patients. This means that the project will make a positive impact on the patient by improving the quality of care offered to them in the organization.

Patient Outcomes/ Efficiencies

Previously, healthcare systems were characterized by increased number of medical errors committed by the nursing and increased miscommunication that influences the quality of care offered to the patient. With the implementation of this project such errors will be eliminated. In addition, errors made through manual writings might be hard to detect, but with a technologically driven information system, such issues will never be experienced (Mosier, Roberts & Englebright, 2019). Besides, involved in prescriptions and pharmacists will be able to give the right medication as opposed to when such prescriptions are handwritten and can be misread, which increases the risk of giving the wrong medication. Therefore, nursing informatics will change the nursing informatics by making it more integrated. There is increased communication between the nurse and the patient and integrating them in the treatment process to ensure the best patient outcomes are realized. Holding discussions with the patients increases interpersonal relations and they are able to reveal other symptoms they might have (Nagle et al., 2017). Other factors likely to affect the treatment process are revealed making it easier for the nurse to avoid approaches that might not be culturally acceptable during care delivery. This makes care delivery more personal and realizes the best outcomes.

Required Technology

Technology innovations made previously in the healthcare systems have made a great milestone towards improving processes by making them more effective. This project will be highly dependent on electronic health records and medical records for implementation. HER was previously implemented as a technology breakthrough who main objective was to store patient information (Kinnunen et al., 2019). Therefore, the nursing professionals must have the necessary technical knowledge on the performance of the electronic health record.

EHR and EMR led to a breakthrough in healthcare services by making it easier to access patient history, making it easier to offer evidence-based interventions, and improving overall efficiency in handling patient record with higher degree of privacy (Kinnunen et al., 2019). Through this system, the proposed project makes digital records of patient information, reducing the possibility of losing or misplacing patient information. This ensures that reference information is accessible at the click of a button. Adopting these technologies will lead to high efficiency by significantly reducing the errors that were previously committed during treatment. This guarantees high quality healthcare services and batter patient outcomes because of more accurate diagnosis based on patient’s medical needs. Technology makes it easier to streamline healthcare services to promote the quality and sustainability.

Project Team

The project will have a team of individual of carrying out various project activities. The organization’s project manager will be responsible for ensuring project plan and budget is presented before the organization’s management for approval. The project manager will work closely with organization’s finance manager when assessing the benefits, the project will bring to the organization and decide whether it is feasible. The IT department manager will be an integral part of the project because he will help in the technical aspects of the project including the software needed for the project. A quality manager needs to be part of the team because he is responsible for assessing the quality requirements for the patient are observed at all levels of project implementation. The nursing informacists will be needed because they are responsible for using the system and they will be trained during the project utilization phase to ensure they are able to use the system effectively as well as adhering to privacy and quality of care (Sipes, 2016).

Conclusion

Technology is an important aspect in the healthcare setting, and any care delivering system need to have technology driven services to keep up with healthcare market competition. Patient outcomes are used as metrics for assessing the efficiency and effectiveness of the healthcare systems. An organization that is unable to meet the desired care outcomes among patients will not be preferred by patients. Besides, the nurses play a significant role in ensuring the goal of the organization of achieve better patient outcomes is achieved. Therefore, with the appropriate systems in place, these goals will be achieved. The nursing informatics will have a significant impact on overall efficiency, which will drive better patient outcomes for the organization.

References

Ariosto, D. A., Harper, E. M., Wilson, M. L., Hull, S. C., Nahm, E. S., & Sylvia, M. L. (2018). Population health: a nursing action plan. JAMIA open, 1(1), 7-10. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamiaopen/ooy003

Kinnunen, U. M., Heponiemi, T., Rajalahti, E., Ahonen, O., Korhonen, T., & Hyppönen, H. (2019). Factors Related to Health Informatics Competencies for Nurses—Results of a National Electronic Health Record Survey. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 37(8), 420-429. doi: 10.1097/CIN.0000000000000511.

Mosier, S., Roberts, W. D., & Englebright, J. (2019). A systems-level method for developing nursing informatics solutions: the role of executive leadership. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 49(11), 543-548. DOI: 10.1097/NNA.0000000000000815

Nagle, L. M., Sermeus, W., Junger, A., & Bloomberg, L. S. (2017). Evolving role of the nursing informatics specialist. Stud Health Technol Inform, 232, 212-22. doi:10.3233/978-1-61499-738-2-212

Sipes, C. (2016, January). Project Management: Essential Skill of Nurse Informaticists. In Nursing Informatics (pp. 252-256). DOI: 10.3233/978-1-61499-658-3-252