From lifestyle to entertainment, the world is evolving thanks to big technological advancements throughout the years. People are finding different ways to use tech tools and programs to improve their daily life. Even different industries have been incorporating the usage of tech in their processes and systems.
Whether people prefer newer methods or the traditional methods, one thing still remains important in society – its people. But how exactly can the modern healthcare setting keep up with the changing times to ensure every individual’s well-being? The answer is through utilizing nursing informatics.
Nursing informatics is a specialty that combines three important fields together namely, nursing science, computer technology, and information science.¹ It utilizes all three to efficiently collect medical data using organizational systems and analyze them for the improvement of nursing practices.
Informatics nurses are responsible for maintaining software and hardware used in data collection and keeping. They also manage the process of analyzing data and using the results for choosing solutions or creating new ones.
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So why should you care about nurse informaticists and the work they do? Well, they’re your key to improving and modernizing the services you offer in your medical institution.
Utilizing nursing informatics serves an important role in optimizing the quality of patient care and healthcare delivery. It can generate significant benefits for your patients, your staff, and for your institution in general.
Combining the three different fields gives your nurses work that wouldn’t be doable with just one or two parts of the formula. They need to integrate their expertise in nursing science along with their skills in technology and information science.
Nursing informatics offers a host of benefits. Here are some of them.
The most groundbreaking benefit nursing informatics can offer is related to the quality of healthcare medical professionals provide. Since informatics specialists are expected to incorporate tech into their day-to-day work, they are already helping modernize the field of medicine and healthcare.
Through health informatics, data can be efficiently noted and is always available to be seen and analyzed by other professionals in the field. This generates many beneficial outcomes such as the creation of more personalized patient plans, timely diagnoses of sicknesses, and adaptive strategies made exactly for the needs of your people and institution.
Aside from being a way to improve patient care, nursing informatics can offer an accurate and sustainable process of gathering patient information and records. It sustains data integrity by using a centralized electronic system. This prevents information from being misplaced or tampered with. It also stops other errors associated with having paper-based records from happening.
Since medical professionals have immediate access to reliable information, the percentage of medical errors also decreases. As a result, patients receive optimal healthcare experiences thanks to the evidence-based decisions chosen by their medical professionals.
One of the main responsibilities of nursing informatics specialists is to ensure that data received by the medical institution they work for are structured and organized. They do so by developing and maintaining the data systems being used and offering solutions if there are problems met.
Oftentimes, they’ll be asked to adapt chosen systems based on the needs of the institution using their skills in the field of tech. By improving data organization, they’re also ensuring information is secured and easy to be analyzed once needed.²
Aside from accurate data analysis, informatics nurses also help in reducing the costs of maintaining public health. Since systems are used to document information and store it, the budget meant for unnecessary expenditures like paper and ink could be allotted to more important things.
Due to the effort of streamlining repetitive tasks when handling patient information, hospitals and medical centers could also save both money and effort thanks to the reduction of administrative tasks needed.
With so many innovations happening in the field of nursing informatics, the following are some examples you can also utilize in your own business.
Instead of using paper, your institution can use electronic means to record your patients’ medical history. It could include details from basic data to their most recent diagnosis and medications. This innovation creates a centralized platform that can be easily accessible to your medical staff to help them provide quality healthcare services.
This innovation is made in the form of software that helps healthcare professionals in making vital clinical decisions. It is programmed to analyze available data and provide evidence-based recommendations and insights. Having this system in your institution can lead to more timely and highly accurate decisions that consider all given information, practices, and guidelines vital to each case.
Used as a form of mobile application, this innovative software focuses on supporting patients and gathering important information at their convenience. For example, patients may use this app to monitor their glucose levels on a daily basis. mHealth also includes a variety of features ranging from educating patients to offering different telehealth services they can access wherever they are.
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If you’ve already decided to incorporate nursing informatics in your institution, you may be asking the question “How?”. The following are four simple steps you can take to get started in your journey of utilizing nursing informatics.
Each institution is different, so the first step is to conduct an assessment of your company’s current needs and existing systems. Which part of the workflow do you need to improve with technology?
Once you’ve figured out what your people and patients need, you need to define goals and objectives for nursing informatics that you want to meet. This step is important to ensure all of your next steps align with the outcome you want to eventually reach.
With your goals and objectives set, it’s time to create a plan. Do thorough research on systems offered in the field of nursing informatics. When choosing the best innovative tech to use, keep the needs of your patients and employees at the forefront of your mind. This will help you in sifting through options and picking the best ones.
Your objectives are set as well as a plan to succeed but how sure are you that they actually solve the problems existing in your company? The best way to answer this is to gather comments and feedback from your stakeholders. This shouldn’t include only those in high positions in your institutions but also all of the people working for you.
Remember that nursing informatics should help both your patients and your healthcare providers. Gather their input on objectives you’ve set and how you plan to achieve them before you begin implementation.
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We prioritize serving with compassion and empathy here at PRS Global. With that said, we want to help you create the best healthcare experiences for your patients with nursing informatics.
As a proud source of hope, we can help you meet your medical institution’s staffing demands. Through our global pipeline, we can connect you with vetted nurse informaticists and other healthcare professionals who can help heal the people of America. Let us strive for your institution’s success in the medical field. Contact us today to start!
References
1 “What’s It Like to Work As a Nurse Informaticist?” All Nursing Schools, 7 Jul. 2023, www.allnursingschools.com/nursing-informatics/job-description/.
2 Nursing Program Insights. “Nursing Informatics: Where Nursing and Technology Coincide.” Post University, 3 Feb. 2022, post.edu/blog/what-is-nursing-informatics/.