Nursing Informatics

Nursing
Informatics
 Introduction
The worlds of health care, communication, and information technologies
are ever evolving, separately and together. As nurses in the the community
expand thier practice definition to embrace new information technologies,
opportunities for improved health care to populations seem endless. This
evolution is seen as a merger of health care technology with information and
communications technology, fostering the design and implementation of health
care management information systems in a variety of clinical practice
settings.the clinical practice settings involved in this new technology include
both the acute care and community-based practice environments. Organizations
such as hospitals and community-based agencies such as public health
departements and home agencies use information and communications
technologies to collect, restore, retrieve, analyze, and present client care data in
the care delivery settings. Health care continues to be a human endeavor that is
necessarily complex in nature. Decisions related to client care continue to
increase in complexity, with the need for rapid, accurate information for clinical
decisions making as a priority for effective care.
 Definition of Nursing Informatics
Nursing Informatics uses nursing science, computer and communications
technologies to produce effective and efficient client outcomes for individuals
and communities.
 Informatics
Informatics generally can be defined as the art and science of turning data
into information. The more recently informatics defined as the study of the
application of computer tcchnology and ststistical techniques to the
management of information.

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 Medical informatics refers to the application of informatics to all

of healthy care disciplins as well as to the practice of medicine.
 Nursing informatics is the use of information and computer
technology to support all aspects of nursing including the direct delivery
of care, administration, education, and research.
The nurse can use the information technology to manag and process the
information with the assistence of the computer. Informatics provides tools to
help to process, store, retrive and analyze data and information to improve
patient care. The nurse should search for more and new knowledge from
different source and maintaing continuing education. Informatics can help her in
this role and can provide computerized assessment and documentation forms
that facilitat data collection and maintain right information at right time. This
saves her time and effort. The goal is to ensure that data collected and housed
within automated record system to be available as information for health care
professional, administrative and research personnel.
Informatics helps nurses in project management, consultation, clinical,
practice, administration, education and research, so all nurses need to establish a
level of awareness and competence in it.
 There are four levels of informatics competencies.
1- The Beginning Nurse → have a fundamental information and management
skills.
2- The Experienced Nurse → highly skilled in use of informatics to support
her practice.
3- Informatics Nurse Specialist → has advanced preparation in information
management, she focuses on applications to support nursing practice and use
skills in critical thinking, decision making and system development.
4- Innovator Nurse → Conducts informatics research and general informatics
theory and creative in developing solutions and has a sophisticated level of
understanding and skills in computer technology.

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 General Application
Nursing Practice → medication instructions, discharge instructions for
patients.
Administration → automated staff scheduling.
Education → Access to library and internet sources for students.
Research → Computerized literature searching.
It will add to nursing knowledge, improving quality of care, and provide
high level of competence of patients care.
Internet can provide marketing services such as job postings,
advertisment of health srvices, dissemenation and revision of product
information and on line risk assessment.
 The Science of Nursing Informatics
The emergence of the specialty known as nursing informatics is not a
recent phenomenon. That nurses have been using computers since the 1950s and
emerged as an advanced specialty in the 1980s. According to Graves and
Corcoran devised aconceptual framwork describes the relationship among
computer science, information systems science, and nursing science. That
believed that information management processing of nursing data is achieved
through the collection of data, the transformation of nursing data into nursing
information, the finally into nursng knowledge.

Nursing
Nursing Data . information Nursing knowledge

For example
The collection of individual data element "Raw Data" the transition of
raw data to knowledge is a three phased process.
"Nursing Data" is the raw data such as client name, age, gender, diagnosis
when the nurse form a relationships between the raw data elements " form fully
picture of client's clinical status this is called "Nursing Information "
then the nurse acts on this information by formulating a set of interventions to

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deal with the particulars of a specific client care situation. That are in a form
that can be subjects to analysis and interpretation. Nursing information realidy
lends itself to archiving or storage in computer data bases that allow rational
grouping of nursing information then allows for aggregation of information and
the systematic study of nursing related phenomena . sets of nursng information
that conform to theoretical and conceptul frameworks are known as " Nursing
Knowledge"
Hence, computerized information systems used in the comunity health
nursing practice setting can assist in the development of nursing knowlege
throuhgh the automated process of collecting.
 Benefits of Nursing Informatics for Community Halth Nursing.
1- Help in collect client data for other disciplines, the profession

nursing leads the way in data collection, the use of stadardized

language classifications, and design support for automated systems
that can assist in supporting the integration of other health care
disiplines that help to coordinate care.
2- Help to transfere data into knowledge, such as data about client or

caregiver and also organization agency & community resources also

data about domain specific data such as health care providers and
outcomes to CHN interventions.
3- The nurse can use the information technology to manage and

process the information with the assistance of the computer.

4- Informatics provides tools to help to process, store, retrieve and
analyze data and information to improve patient care.
5- The nurse can search for more information from different sources
and maintaining continuing education.
6- It can help the nurse by providing computerized assesssment and

documentation forms that facilitate data collection and maintain right

information at right time. This saves her time and effort.

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7- In addition, it can help the nurse in project mannagement, clinical

practice and research.
8- Computerized literature searching is one of the informatics
applications in field research.
9- Informatics also will add to nursing knowledge, improving quality
of care, and provide high level of competence of patint care.
10- Internet can provide marketing services such as job posting,
advertisements of health services and online risk assessment.
11- The web-based management provides a way to monitor large

number of clients efficiently on daily basis and avoid unnecessary

hospital admission.
12- Surveillance is another aspect of public health that could be

dramatically transformed by the application of information

technology.
 Client Information Management.
Collection of client related clinical data takes a considrable amount of
time and effort, CHN require accurate assessment of clients for appropriate
management. This information can be stored for future retrieval, and the
aggregation of this information can be analyzed for the benefit of the
community. This process also help CHN to saving time, provide efficiency
informations, according to Bargstadt ( 1998) described several benefits of
informations systems use in the community setting.
1- Collcting data to demonstrate clinical effectiveness of community
health nursing care delivery to a specific population.
2- Analyzing the collected clinical data for statistical comparison.
3- Determining the cost- effectiveness of CHN programs on the care
of clients and caregivers.
4- Using cost- effective data collection for outcome measurement.

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 Web Based Management

Provides a way to monitor large numbers of clients efficiently on a daily
basis. But the largest concern is th security of cliect data while the lesser
concerns include viral contamination and lack of adherence to internet standars.
Electronic Health → Brings information, products and services on line.
Electronic care → refers to the automation of all parts of the care delivery
process across adminstrative, clinical and departemental boundraies.
 Health Care Information System
Refersd to a group of systems used within a hospital or enterprise that
support and enhance health care. It includes clinical information systems and
administrative information system.
 Nursing Information System
Supports the use and documentation of nursing process, activities and
provide tools for managing the delivery of nursing care to improve quality of
care and documentation.
Electronic prescribing :- allows the physician to enter a prexription into an
information system. This information is electronically communicated to the
client s' pharmacy.
 Application: Home Health Care & Tele Health.

Telecommunication technology can reduce home health care costs and

increase freguency and availability of health services. It provides accessibility
to support groups, treatment, information and electronic communication with
health care providerts. Also it helps the clinician to monitor and handle more
number of clients. For example women with high risk pregnancies, clients with
chronic health problems , elderly and postoperative clients. It elimenates the
travelling, waiting and discomfort of elderly through televisits. It can be used to
remember the client to take his medication so it reduces the risk of

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complications and number of hospital visits. It also supports the data collection
and documentation by using technology.
Web Based Solution for care coordination can integrate results from
biometric measures and diagnostics tests to antomatically alert the clinican
about the panic values.
Elderly with hearing problems can use the mail order to maintain
communication and not use the telephone conversation.
In elderly homes, the institution can use monitoring system which contain
sensors to detect falls and alert the nurse to the problem. Also she can use
informatics in data collection and documentation .telecommunication and web
based management can used in elderly homes.community health nurse should
create a strategy that puts them in control of their roles to improve the CHN in
balance with the rapid technology.