The majority of nurses have, at one point or another, manipulated knowledge, data, or information in a move to make informed and wise decisions. According to Field, Fong, & Shade (2018), data manipulation is the process of transforming data to make it more organized and easier to read and interpret. The authors mention that information that always needs manipulation is a huge junk of data that cannot be understood in its current form.
When in my care practicum, I came across a scenario that needed me to manipulate data for proper decision making in the facility. At that time, the professional nurse informatics in charge of analyzing big data was on vacation. The charge nurse gave me the responsibility to analyze and manipulate the patients’ data to help discharging, billing, and treatment processes easy and efficient. In other words, I was supposed to make billing, treating, and discharge processes run smoothly without hitches. As a result, I manipulated data in two ways. First, I arranged patients’ information in alphabetical order to help me track their progress and identify the ones that have not received their daily medication.
When going through admission reports, it found that the nurse in charge of admission did not arrange the information in a systematic order. Thus, I rearranged the data in alphabetical order based on the patients’ names. This arrangement helped me know the number of patients who had been admitted that day and the conditions that they were admitted for. The second manipulation method was an arrangement of data-based discharge dates. The rearranged the initial information and indicated the patients who were being discharged soon.
This information helped the billing department to develop bills for the patients being discharged to ensure they the individuals to wait for long before being released from the facility. Also, the discharge information helped the patient know the amount of money they own the facility and how they can cover the bills. I did this work for two days and never failed. From this experience, I realized that all nurses have, at one point, became informatics, as stated by Staggers and Nelson.
What do you believe are the advantages and disadvantages of having a single shared consensus-driven model of terminology use? How can a single agreed model of terminology use (with linkages to a single terminology) help to integrate knowledge into routine clinical practice?
The nursing sector has developed a standard terminology that should be used to communicate all the nursing messages. This mode of communication has both advantages and disadvantages. The following are some of the advantages. First, having a common terminology can facilitate communication between nurses from different language backgrounds. For instance, nurses from India can communicate with the ones in China using a common terminology model, and this can be used to break the communication barrier between healthcare providers.
Another advantage is that it can make it easy for all medical professionals to determine the right medication for the patient. McGonigle and Mastrian (2017) argue that patient outcomes can be improved when every medical officer can read and understand his or her diagnosis and take action based on shared data. The last advantage of common terminology is that it can improve communication between nurses and other professionals, such as pharmacists.
On the other hand, the following are the disadvantages of common terminology in nursing. First, the model has brought confusion between nurses from different regions. Collins, Yen, Phillips and Kennedy (2017) argue that confusion has been experienced because not all nurses across the globe are often included when developing the terms. Another disadvantage is that it limits conversation between nurses on how best to help their patients. This form of communication is formal, but nurses connect more when they are in informal communication.
A single agreed model of terminology use can make it easy for nurses and other medical professionals to share health information, skills, or knowledge regardless of their practicum or language differences. Cummings et al. (2016) argue that a single agreed model of terminology can improve message transfer and sharing because it provides a common communication ground.
Hospital C is looking to implement an EHR. It has been suggested that a NIS be hired. This position does not involve direct patient care and the administration is struggling with how to justify the position. How can this position be justified?
Similar to other nursing specialties or roles, such as surgical, pediatric, triage, family care, or many other responsibilities, informatics plays a vital role in the healthcare field and should be treated as such. Nurses in the informatics unit do not impact patients directly. However, the facility cannot survive without their input. Thus, other care staff should not think the nurse informatics has no role to play in patient care. The following are some of the roles of nurse informatics, which can be used to justify their posts.
First, nurse informaticists are responsible for designing information systems that can be used to improve the quality of care. One of the systems that have been designed and developed by the help of nurse informaticist is electronic health records (EHRs). Collins et al. (2017) note that the informaticist must be included in such projects because they have the ability to include what nurses and patients need in the design.
Together with IT experts, nurse informaticists ensure that all healthcare systems, such as EHRs and other telehealth, are operating smoothly without hitches. In other words, they are responsible for maintaining the systems and updating the ones that need security updates. Another vital role of informatics is to manipulate healthcare data so that ordinary nurses and understand and interpret it (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017).
Some people may think that the role of nurse informaticists can be conducted by any other nurse in the facility. However, this is not true; the roles mentioned above cannot be performed by people with little or no knowledge in healthcare informatics.
Conclusion
One of the things that have been noted in this assignment is that ordinary nurses should have some knowledge of nursing informatics roles. However, the organization should employ informatics to work on nurse informatics. The paper has also found that common terminology facilitates communication between healthcare providers regardless of their region or level of education. However, the model has made nursing communication more formal, and thus reduced informal interactions between the professionals.
References
Collins, S., Yen, P. Y., Phillips, A., & Kennedy, M. K. (2017). Nursing informatics competency assessment for the nurse leader: The Delphi study. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 47(4), 212-218. DOI: 10.1097/NNA.0000000000000467