Healthcare Inter-professional Collaboration Discussion
Healthcare professionals embrace interprofessional collaboration as an ideal strategy for ensuring quality service delivery and improving health decisions. Amidst the overarching need to incorporate nursing informatics in improving decisions and solving clinical problems, nurse informaticists interact with other specialists, including nurses and physicians to bridge the chasms between healthcare and technologies. According to McGonigle & Mastrian (2018), nursing informatics support nurses, patients, and interdisciplinary teams in decision-making processes. Therefore, interactions between nurse informaticists and other healthcare specialists emerge as a profound tenet of collaboration and concerted efforts for improving care and informing decisions. Healthcare Inter-professional Collaboration Discussion
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In my organization, I have observed that nurse informaticists play a significant role in determining care trajectories. For example, the process of collecting patient information starts with receptionists who are familiar with data collection strategies. After collecting patient data, nurse informaticists participate in the triage, a system that categorizes patients according to emergency, priority, and non-urgent signs. According to Bazyar et al. (2019), triage systems are essential in enabling healthcare professionals to categorize patients and provide timely care to those grappling with emergency and priority signs. Therefore, the interactions between nurse informaticists and other healthcare professionals like nurses within the triage system are essential in saving lives, providing timely care, and improving decisions.
Although the interaction between nurse informaticists and other professionals forms the basis of collaborative and concerted efforts to improve care, an absence of an effective communication platform can hinder information-sharing mechanisms, contributing to delayed care. Therefore, one way to improve interdisciplinary interactions in healthcare settings is to embrace advanced information technologies such as electronic health records (EHRs). Quinn et al. (2019) contend that electronic health records (EHRs) improve communication by creating possibilities for effective and timely access to data, influencing physician workflow, workload, and interactive practices. Undoubtedly, electronic health records (EHRs) can enhance the culture of sharing information within the triage system by allowing nurse informaticists to effectively share patients’ vital signs with other healthcare professionals. Healthcare Inter-professional Collaboration Discussion
The continued evolution of nurse informatics as a specialty requires nurse informaticists to update their skills and knowledge of the emerging new health information technologies. McGonigle & Mastrian (2018) argue that informatics nurse specialists should possess additional knowledge and skills specific to computer technology and information management. An example of emerging technologies that prompt informatics nurse specialists to advance their skills and knowledge is telehealth. In this case, telehealth technology can complement other technological advances such as electronic health records (EHRs) to enable remote patient monitoring, e-health, and e-consultations. For instance, the interrelationships between telehealth technology and EHRs enable healthcare professionals to remotely track patients’ vital signs, including blood pressure, body mass index (BMI), heart rate, and sugar levels (Soon et al., 2020). In turn, these possibilities are consistent with the overarching need to promote early disease detection and enhance timely medical interventions to save lives. Healthcare Inter-professional Collaboration Discussion
Amidst the impacts of emerging technologies in nursing informatics and the overall care delivery, it is essential to enable more access to patients’ medical records across a wide range of healthcare facilities to ensure care convenience and continuity. Eventually, nurse informaticists should seize this opportunity by advancing their skills and knowledge to tackle various challenges emanating from advanced technologies, such as system failures, usability issues, and alarm fatigue.
References
Bazyar, J., Farrokhi, M., & Khankeh, H. (2019). Triage systems in mass casualty incidents and disasters: A review study with a worldwide approach. Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences, 7(3), 482–494. https://doi.org/10.3889/oamjms.2019.119
McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2018). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
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Quinn, M., Forman, J., Harrod, M., Winter, S., Fowler, K. E., Krein, S. L., Gupta, A., Saint, S., Singh, H., & Chopra, V. (2019). Electronic health records, communication, and data sharing: Challenges and opportunities for improving the diagnostic process. Diagnosis, 6(3), 241–248. https://doi.org/10.1515/dx-2018-0036
Soon, S., Svavarsdottir, H., Downey, C., & Jayne, D. G. (2020). Wearable devices for remote vital signs monitoring in the outpatient setting: An overview of the field. BMJ Innovations, bmjinnov-2019-000354. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjinnov-2019-000354 Healthcare Inter-professional Collaboration Discussion
