Application: Informatics Functional Areas

 In 1992, Nursing Informatics was recognized as a specialty by the American Nurse Association (ANA). Nursing continues to be one of the most demanding and critical fields in medicine. Being a nurse for over 22 years, it wasn’t until the last 16 years that I had the opportunity to excel in various nursing positions which involved data mining via electronic medical records or some part of nursing informatics process. Technology in health care is increasingly becoming an integral component of the U.S. health care delivery system. Nurses, through their role in the delivery of patient care, have a pivotal role in technology deployment, maintenance, and evolution.  Although nurses are becoming involved in technology in health care, the specific roles are diverse, and more nurses are expressing an interest in nursing informatics according to Ericksen (2009). Of those many roles, nursing informatics has become one of those key roles. It became my goal to learn more about nursing informatics to improve the safety and efficiency of patient care via electronic medical records documentation.

Key Functional Areas and Relevance

According to the ANA, there are nine functional area of nursing informatics (2015).  During my military career, I have gained experiences via the various functional roles of informatics nursing all except the “research and evaluation” according to ANA (2015). For example, I held many nursing leadership and management positions as a utilization/case/disease manager, clinical director of operations, health care integrator, and medical management director and inspection compliance officer.  For the purpose of this discussion, the two key functional areas of informatics were found to be relevant to my interest and nursing career is leadership and compliance.

When I think of the roles and responsibilities of a nurse leader, who plays a significant role in advocating for nursing informatics “interpersonal collaboration” comes to mind in developing technology (ANA, 2015).  Also, nurse informatics, leaders need to communicate clearly and concisely and to structure their ideas strategically in line with the organization’s mission and goals (ANA, 2015).  Together with nurse frontline managers and clinical leaders, and nurse informatics leaders help set the organization’s direction and objectives. Also, these teams strive for consistent practices and accountability across an organization. Also,

In 2005, I was stationed overseas as a new Director of Quality. Upon my arrival, there was an influx of medication errors approximately 45 reported via The Patient Safety Reporting System (PSRS) all within year to include three sentinel events. There were a few nurses' names repeated via PSRS. The Chief Nurse (CN) was in the process to submit paperwork to have their license suspended. Also, the next step was to have them remove from the military if there was no progress within a year. In preparation for my new job, I attended a course in TapRoot and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) workshop to prepare me for my job. The resources and tools I learned from taking the workshop assisted me initiating a working group called “TapRoot - Medication Administration Back to the Basic." Where I included the nurses, who were making repeated medications errors to include junior/seasons nurses (Med/OB). We looked at the current processes, standardization, techniques to investigate, to analyze and develop corrective actions to solve problems. We set a goal to be medication error free for six months. That said, we were medication error free for eleven months straight, and we received a “Best Practice” during the Health Service Inspection (military inspection silimar to TJC) and JCAHO (now called The Joint Commission).

 As a healthcare professional, I feel by taking a proactive approach allows us to manage our processes and provide better care to our patients that optimize safety via documentation/EHR.

References

American Nurses Association. (2015). Nursing informatics: Scope and standards of  practice (2nd ed.). Silver Spring, MD: American Nurses Association.

Ericksen, A. B. (2009). Informatics: The future of nursing. RN, 72(7), 34-37. Retrieved from the Walden Library databases