Proposal for Nurse Informaticist Assignment
Care
Introduction
Nurses at the baccalaureate level in all practice areas are involved in nursing informatics through interaction with information management and patient care technologies. Nurses must demonstrate knowledge of and skills in health information and patient care technologies, as well as how to use these tools at the bedside and organizational levels. Moreover, nurses need to recognize how information gathered from various health information sources can impact decision-making at the national and state regulatory levels.
Demonstration of Proficiency
By successfully completing this assignment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the course competencies through the following scoring guide criteria: Proposal for Nurse Informaticist Assignment
Competency 1: Describe nurses\’ and the interdisciplinary team’s role in informatics with a focus on electronic health information and patient care technology to support decision-making.
Define nursing informatics and the role of the nurse informaticist.
Explain how the nurse collaborates with the interdisciplinary team, including technologists, to improve the quality of patient care.
Justify the need for a nurse informaticist in a health care organization.
Competency 2: Implement evidence-based strategies to effectively manage protected health information.
Explain evidence-based strategies that the nurse and interdisciplinary team can use to effectively manage patients\’ protected health information (privacy, security, and confidentiality).
Competency 5: Apply professional, scholarly communication to facilitate use of health information and patient care technologies.
Follow APA style and formatting guidelines for citations and references.
Create a clear, well-organized, and professional proposal that is generally free from errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
Your Online ePortfolio
Creating an ePortfolio is not required in the BSN program, but you may find it helpful to create one to attach to your professional resume while job hunting. Online ePortfolios serve two key purposes: 1) to support learning and reflection, and 2) to be used as a showcase tool. Your learning journey can be documented, and ePortfolios contribute to lifelong learning and growth through reflection and sharing. Online ePortfolios can also be shared with employers and peers to present artifacts that demonstrate your accomplishments at Capella.
Using ePortfolio to Build Your Career
As you are preparing to tell your story in the professional world, leverage your ePortfolio artifacts to demonstrate the knowledge and competencies you have gained through your program in professional conversations, performance reviews, and interviews. To do that, reflect on the knowledge and skills you have gained from your courses and the elements you have put in your portfolio, along with how you have already applied these things to your professional life or how you might apply them in the future. Next, create your story or talking points to tell your professional story.
Privacy Statement
Capella complies with privacy laws designed to protect the privacy of personal information. While you may voluntarily share your own information publicly, you are obligated to protect the personal information of others that may be associated with your academic or professional development. Before sharing information and material in any ePortfolio that is set up to be shared externally to your program at Capella, please consider privacy obligations in relation to protected populations who may be included or referenced in your academic or clinical work. Refer to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and/or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) if you have specific questions or concerns about your choices.
Scenario
For this assignment, assume you are a nurse attending a meeting of your state\’s nurses association. A nurse informaticist conducted a presentation on her role and its impact on positive patient and organizational outcomes in her workplace. You realize that your organization is undergoing many technological changes. You believe this type of role could provide many benefits to your organization.
You decide to pursue proposing a nurse informaticist role in your organization. You speak to your chief nursing officer (CNO) and human resources (HR) manager, who asks you to prepare a 4–5 page evidence-based proposal to support the new role. In this way, they can make an informed decision as to whether the addition of such a role could justify the return on investment (ROI). They need your proposal before an upcoming fiscal meeting.​ This is not an essay, but instead, it is a proposal to create a new Nurse Informaticist position. Proposal for Nurse Informaticist Assignment
One important part of this assignment is the justification of the need for a nurse informaticist in a health care organization and references from relevant and timely scholarly or professional resources to support the justification for creating this nurse informaticist position. The term justify means to show or prove that the nurse informaticist position brings value to the organization. This justification must include evidence from the literature to support that this position will provide a return on investment for the organization.
Proposal Format
The CNO and HR manager have asked you to include the following headings in your proposal and to be sure to address the bullets following each heading:
Nursing Informatics and the Nurse Informaticist
What is nursing informatics?
What is the role of the nurse informaticist?
Nurse Informaticists and Other Health Care Organizations
What is the experience of other health care organizations with nurse informaticists?
How do these nurse informaticists interact with the rest of the nursing staff and the interdisciplinary team?
Impact of Full Nurse Engagement in Health Care Technology
How does fully engaging nurses in health care technology impact:
Patient care?
Protected health information (security, privacy, and confidentiality)?
In this section, you will explain evidence-based strategies that the nurse informaticist and interdisciplinary team can use to effectively manage patients\’ protected health information, particularly privacy, security, and confidentiality. Evidence-based means that they are supported by evidence from scholarly sources.
Workflow?
Costs and return on investment?
Opportunities and Challenges
What are the opportunities and challenges for nurses and the interdisciplinary team with the addition of a nurse informaticist role?
How can the interdisciplinary team collaborate to improve quality care outcomes through technology?
Summary of Recommendations
What are the three or four key takeaways from your proposal about the recommended nurse informaticist role that you want the CNO and the HR manager to remember?
This is the section where the justification for the implementation of the nursing informaticist is addressed. Remember to include evidence from the literature to support your recommendation.
Additional Requirements
Written communication: Ensure written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
Submission length: 4–5 double-spaced pages, in addition to a title page and references page.
Font: Times New Roman, 12 point.
Citations and References: Cite a minimum of three current scholarly and/or authoritative sources to support your ideas. In addition, cite a minimum of one current professional blog or website to support your central ideas. Current means no more than five years old.
APA formatting: Be sure to follow APA formatting and style guidelines for citations and references. For an APA refresher, consult the Evidence and APA page on Campus.
Please try to keep it to 5 pages. I\’d rather it be mediocre than cost more please. You guys are the best.
Healthcare technology presents several opportunities for transforming and advancing healthcare quality and safety. However, healthcare organizations must be selective in the technologies they invest in, as some technologies have demonstrated limited efficacy in improving patient safety and quality of care (Feldman et al., 2018). Healthcare technologies, particularly electronic health information, significantly facilitate effective clinical and healthcare decision-making by ensuring that the necessary healthcare information is readily accessible. Nevertheless, healthcare technologies are sophisticated and require expertise and skills to use effectively. As healthcare organizations commence to implement healthcare technologies, it is frequently uncertain where human and fiscal efforts should be focused. This paper will focus on justifying the need for a nurse informaticist in a healthcare organization and evidence-based strategies to manage protected health information effectively.
Nursing Informatics and the Nurse Informaticist
Nursing informatics encompasses the science and practice of integrating nursing information and knowledge with technology to control and integrate health information. The American Nurses Association defines nursing informatics as “the specialty that integrates nursing science with multiple information management and analytical sciences to identify, define, manage, and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice” (Hussey, 2021). Nursing informatics principally aims at improving people’s health while lowering the cost of healthcare. Additionally, nursing informatics develops ways and technologies for the collection, processing, and study of patient information. Nurse informaticists refer to nurse specialists that work with healthcare software and hardware to process, store, and retrieve data to optimize healthcare delivery and improve patient outcomes.
Nurse informaticists play elemental roles in healthcare. Nurse informaticists, for instance, support nurses, interprofessional teams, patients, and other healthcare stakeholders in their decision-making roles to optimize healthcare delivery and patient outcomes. Through their comprehensive understanding of clinical processes and workflows, nurse informaticists ensure optimal data maximization and application of technology in daily nursing practice. Similarly, nurse informaticists design, test and implement system technologies. Additionally, nurse informaticists serve as a link between healthcare staff and information technology experts. Nurse informaticists further participate in the education of other nurses in matters regarding informatics as well as the formulation of policies and standards. Finally, informaticists serve as project managers and researchers and assess user requirements to enable the smooth transition from one healthcare technology to the next.
Nurse Informaticists and Other Health Care Organizations
Nurse informaticists work in several areas, such as hospitals, nursing schools, clinics, healthcare consulting firms, IT companies, and long-term care facilities. Nurse informaticists are central to assisting members of these organizations to integrate new information technology applications into daily workflows, enhancing efficiency and productivity. The implementation of new healthcare technologies has been met with a lot of barriers in several healthcare organizations, particularly due to “old school” and resistant employees. However, with nurse informaticists, these employees have been supported and educated to navigate through the new healthcare technologies. Nurse informaticists, through interaction with interdisciplinary teams, play a crucial role in ensuring the continuous development and improvement of healthcare technology. Nurses require information to care for patients safely. In collaboration with interdisciplinary teams, nurse informaticists ensure effective communication, which is inarguably one of the most vital aspects of patient safety. As many healthcare organizations shift to value-based care, nurse informaticists have become critical personnel as they focus on various technical areas to better support patients, nursing staff, and other healthcare providers.
Impact of Full Nurse Engagement in Health Care Technology
The involvement of nurses in healthcare technology significantly impacts patient care. Nurses are usually at the forefront of delivering patient care. According to Darwish et al. (2021), the involvement of nurses in healthcare technology significantly enhances patient safety by reducing medication errors. Additionally, full nurse engagement in healthcare technology reduces inefficiencies during healthcare delivery which considerably reduces the cost of healthcare. Furthermore, fully engaging nurses in healthcare technology allow for greater healthcare service delivery. For instance, with the widespread utilization of healthcare technology, patients in remote places can now access healthcare services readily and at an affordable price. Likewise, nurse engagement in healthcare technology increases the nurse’s productivity and job satisfaction, which motivates the nurse, leading to high-quality care. Finally, nurse engagement in healthcare fosters effective communication, which facilitates care coordination and interprofessional collaboration as well as a patient-centered decision-making system.
Protected Health Information
Protected health information (PHI) refers to “the data that relates to the past, present or the future health of an individual, the provision of healthcare to an individual or the payment for the provision of healthcare to an individual” (HIPAA Journal, 2022). The sensitive and valuable nature of PHI dictates that it is prone to security threats and therefore, must be protected from unauthorized access. HIPAA requires that all covered entities safeguard and secure patient health information. Consequently, several strategies have been proposed by the HIPAA that, when implemented, ensure the privacy, security, and confidentiality of protected health information. These evidence-based strategies include a firewall, a spam filter, an antivirus, data encryption, an intrusion detection system, disaster recovery controls, secure messaging platforms, vulnerability scanning, good patch management software, and extensive backups (HIPAA Journal, 2022). According to Kayaalp (2018), data encryption ensures information is only accessed by authorized personnel only while a spam filter blocks malware and malicious emails. Similarly, an intrusion detection system monitors irregular network activity while a web filter protects employees from accessing malicious websites. Furthermore, an antivirus blocks and detects malware, whereas extensive backups safeguard against the loss of patient information. On the other hand, good patch management policies ensure that software is up to date. Moreover, staff should be enlightened on security and anti-phishing. Finally, a secure messaging platform can be adapted to encrypt all communications. According to Kayaalp (2018), no single strategy can be implemented to secure patient information; therefore, they must be used in combination for maximum effectiveness. Proposal for Nurse Informaticist Assignment
Regarding the workflow and return on investment, nurse informaticists analyze issues related to the organization’s workflow and monitor the system to ensure a smooth workflow. Additionally, they design and develop systems that provide solutions to the inefficiencies in healthcare organizations (Hussey, 2021). A vast majority of healthcare organizations have currently recognized the central role of healthcare technology in ensuring quality and safe patient care. As such, most of these organizations have incorporated the position of nurse informaticist as the benefits significantly outweigh the risks (Hussey, 2021).
Opportunities and Challenges
The addition of a nurse informaticist provides a golden opportunity for the improvement of patient care and safety. For instance, the nurse informaticist will ensure accurate data capture, support patients, and facilitate care coordination. Additionally, the nurse informaticist will actively ensure a smooth transition to new healthcare technologies. Moreover, the nurse informaticist will considerably enlighten other nurses and the interdisciplinary team and act as a link between the nursing staff and the IT experts. However, adding a nurse informaticist can be quite challenging for the nurses and the interdisciplinary team. Such challenges include learning the team dynamics, being overloaded with information, fitting into the company’s culture, poor work-life balance, staff conflict, and lack of motivation. Additionally, adding a new employee can be costly in terms of resources. Nevertheless, the interdisciplinary team can collaborate to improve healthcare quality care outcomes through technology in several ways. Firstly, the interdisciplinary team can exploit healthcare technologies to ensure effective communication, which is critical for collaboration. Additionally, the team must use healthcare technologies such as clinical decision supports systems to ensure shared and effective decision-making. Finally, the interdisciplinary team can participate in the formulation of policies that enhance collaboration.
Summary of Recommendations
The nurse informaticist plays an elemental role in the healthcare industry. The nurse informaticist focuses on several technical areas to better support patients, nursing staff, and other healthcare providers. Nurse informaticists further contribute to the continuous development and evolution of healthcare technologies as well as facilitate a smooth transition to new healthcare technologies (Young, 2021). Additionally, nurse informaticists enlighten nursing staff on the effective use of healthcare technologies and provide a link between the healthcare staff and IT experts. Likewise, nurse informaticists are responsible for system development, project management, system optimization and utilization, and quality initiative planning and reporting. Finally, nurse informaticists facilitate effective communication, which is elemental for healthcare decision-making and care coordination (Young, 2021).
Conclusion
Healthcare technologies significantly enhance patient safety and quality care. A nurse informaticist plays an essential role in ensuring benefits of healthcare technology are accrued. Protected health information is valuable and sensitive and therefore must be secured. Nurses should be fully engaged in healthcare technology. Finally, healthcare organizations should consider nurse informaticists’ position.
References
Darwish, T., Korouri, S., Pasini, M., Cortez, M. V., & IsHak, W. W. (2021). Integration of advanced health technology within the healthcare system to fight the global pandemic: Current challenges and future opportunities. Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience, 18(1–3), 31–34. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34150361
Feldman, S. S., Buchalter, S., & Hayes, L. W. (2018). Health information technology in healthcare quality and patient safety: Literature review. JMIR Medical Informatics, 6(2), e10264. https://doi.org/10.2196/10264
HIPAA Journal. (2022, March 13). How to secure patient information (PHI). HIPAA Journal. https://www.hipaajournal.com/secure-patient-information-phi/
Hussey, P. (2021). Introduction to Nursing Informatics. In Health Informatics (pp. 1–13). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58740-6_1
Kayaalp, M. (2018). Patient privacy in the era of big data. Balkan Medical Journal, 35(1), 8–17. https://doi.org/10.4274/balkanmedj.2017.0966
Young, S. (2021, February 2). A nurse informaticist: 3 essential responsibilities. Health Catalyst. https://www.healthcatalyst.com/insights/nurse-informaticist-3-essential-responsibilities
Proposal for Nurse Informaticist Assignment
