Assignment Task: Interaction Between Nurse Informaticist and Other Specialists
Nature offers many examples of specialization and collaboration. Ant colonies and bee hives are but two examples of nature's sophisticated organizations. Each thrives because their members specialize by tasks, divide labor, and collaborate to ensure food, safety, and general well-being of the colony or hive.
Of course, humans don't fare too badly in this regard either. And healthcare is a great example. As specialists in the collection, access, and application of data, nurse informaticist collaborate with specialists on a regular basis to ensure that appropriate data is available to make decisions and take actions to ensure the general well-being of patients.
In this Discussion, you will reflect on your own observations of and/or experiences with informaticist collaboration. You will also propose strategies for how these collaborative experiences might be improved.
To Prepare:
- Review the Resources and reflect on the evolution of nursing informatics from a science to a nursing specialty.
- Consider your experiences with nurse Informaticists or technology specialists within your healthcare organization.
Post a description of experiences or observations about how nurse informaticists and/or data or technology specialists interact with other professionals within your healthcare organization. Suggest at least one strategy on how these interactions might be improved. Be specific and provide examples. Then, explain the impact you believe the continued evolution of nursing informatics as a specialty and/or the continued emergence of new technologies might have on professional interactions.
Respond to at least two of your colleagues on two different days, offering one or more additional interaction strategies in support of the examples/observations shared or by offering further insight to the thoughts shared about the future of these interactions.
Reply from Natasha Singh
Initial Post:
Data that is collected regarding nursing care has been used to develop technology in ways the support the patient and the staff caring for them (Moiser et al., 2019). Nurse Informaticists interact with IT specialist to enhance their documentation or to add education modules to enhance their knowledge. The IT specialists in my organization work specifically with a system we use called EPIC and this is where we document on our patients, review our notes, and pass our medications. Over the years, EPIC has been revamped quite a few times to assist with the ease of documentation (Chishtie et al., 2023). The IT specialist has created short cuts that ensure we don't forget to document certain vitals or assessments. An example of this would be to chart on our pain assessments. Within my organization, when pain medication is given to a patient, we have to document what the patient's pain rating is on a scale from 1-10, and also what they would like their pain goal to be. So, if their pain is a 7/10 at 8:30 and they receive 2mg of IV morphine, we are responsible for charting their pain reassessment. The reassessment includes what their pain rating is after receiving the morphine, and if their pain goal was met. This reassessment needs to be completed within 30 minutes of administering the medication. The IT department has made it easier for us to remember to chart those reassessments by automatically adding the task to our list if pain medication was administered. This helps us make sure that our documentation is done correctly and on time, and this also assists with audits and with patient care.
The IT department is readily available by phone if we have any issues with EPIC. I think that it would be beneficial for them to attend our quarterly meetings because we can introduce them to other ideas that may help improve how we care for our patients. The IT department receives information from the nurse informaticists based on how our documentation is done. The audits are typically done every quarter and changes can be made based on our scores. During our quarterly meetings, we do discuss ideas that can create positive changes for our units, and we also invite other members of the healthcare team to help collaborate. The IT department sitting in on these meetings can help them gain new insight on other areas of concern within other healthcare specialties. The evolution of nursing informatics as a specialty can help bring members of the healthcare team together to help collaborate on new ideas or areas that could use some improvement. Each of the members can set goals for what they'd like the outcome to be. Advances in technology can help improve patient care and it provides other ways to be efficient for the healthcare team (Hess and Alper, 2024). Need Assignment Help?
References:
Chishtie, J., Sapiro, N., Wiebe, N., Rabatach, L., Lorenzetti, D., Leung, A. A., Rabi, D., Quan, H., & Eastwood, C. A. (2023). Use of Epic Electronic Health Record System for Health Care Research: Scoping Review. Journal of medical Internet research, 25, e51003.
Hess, S., &Alper, C. (2024). Nursing Informatics: The Vital Nursing Link Between Technology and Patient Care. HCA healthcare journal of medicine, 5(5), 513-516.
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.