Evidence-Based Intervention Project for Mitigating the Rise in Covid-19 Infections at Kingston Healthcare in California: Harnessing Nurse Informatics to Facilitate Interventions 

Technology in the form of nurse informatics can no longer be delinked from evidence-based interventions in change projects. His is because technology is a recognized facilitator for the delivery of quality healthcare (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017). By using technology, medical errors are reduced in frequency and patient safety is enhanced. In a report by the Institute of Medicine entitled To Err Is Human and published in the year 1999, there was an acknowledgement that approximately 98,000 patient deaths occur annually in the United States due to preventable human errors. The report concluded that there was a need to incorporate assistance from non-human sources. It proposed the implementation of technology into healthcare as a means to reduce human errors and improve healthcare quality (Palatnik, 2016). Harnessing Nurse Informatics to Facilitate Interventions Essay Paper

Since the release of that IOM report, many steps have been taken on the legislative front to ensure that technology is implemented by all healthcare players as a matter of policy. The laws enacted and brought into force are all concerned with Health Information Management (HIM). This is the task of capturing the biographic and medical data of patients, storing them securely according to the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) requirements, and retrieving them easily and quickly whenever they are required. The two related laws in this case are the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and the Health Information and Technology for Economic Clinical Health Act (HITECH) (Sweeney, 2017). This paper is about the use of technology in the implementation of the Covid-19 capstone project change proposal at the Kingston Healthcare facility.

The Technology to Improve the Implementation Process

The technology that could improve the implementation of the intervention components for the reduction of Covid-19 at Kingston Healthcare is that of electronic health record (EHR) systems. Apart from having a dashboard which monitors quality and performance metrics, the system also has functional components such as clinical decision support (CDS), computerized provider order entry (CPOE), and electronic medical record (EMR) amongst others (Alotaibi & Federico, 2017). I plan to use this technology in implementing the evidence-based interventions for Covid-19 infection prevention and mitigation. The reason for this is that the facility already has an EHR system with full functionality and interoperability that is crucial for care coordination. Harnessing Nurse Informatics to Facilitate Interventions Essay Paper

ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE

The CDS component of the EHR system can be used to make clinical decisions about patients who present at the facility with signs and symptoms of Covid-19. Empirical treatment options and orders for these symptomatic patients will be made through the CPOE, while the medical details and vaccination specifics (such as which vaccine has been administered between Moderna and Pfizer BioNTech, any immediate adverse effects, and date of second shot) will be entered in the EMR. When the patient comes for their second shot or if they come with symptoms after receiving the immunization, it will be easier and faster to retrieve this medical information from the EHR database of the facility. Because of the interoperability of this particular EHR system that underpins care coordination, this patient information will also be available at the click of the mouse to other providers the patient may go to. Since I will be using this technology, it means that the facility has already overcome barriers to its use such as the lack of technological competence among the nurses.

References

Alotaibi, Y., & Federico, F. (2017). The impact of health information technology on patient safety. Saudi Medical Journal, 38(12), 1173–1180. https://doi.org/10.15537/smj.2017.12.20631

McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K.G. (2017). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge, 4th ed. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Palatnik, A. (2016). To err is human. Nursing Critical Care, 11(5), 4. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.CCN.0000490961.44977.8d

Sweeney, J. (2017). Healthcare informatics. Online Journal of Nursing Informatics (OJNI), 21(1). https://www.himss.org/library/healthcare-informatics

The Stakeholder Group that is More Important for the Project’s Success

The group that I feel is more important for this project’s success is that of the nurses as internal stakeholders. This is because the contribution of all the other stakeholders is premised on achieving full buy-in from the nurses. They are the actual implementers of the interventions without whom the whole project would collapse. Using Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations change model, it is the nurses who will be classified as innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards (Dearing & Cox, 2018). This shows that the whole project relies on them and their acceptance of it for its success. Even if vaccines were availed by external stakeholders but the buy-in of nurses has not been achieved, nothing will happen in terms of expected outcomes.

References

Dearing, J.W. & Cox, J.G. (2018). Diffusion of innovations theory, principles, and practice. Health Affairs, 37(2), 183-190. http://dx.doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2017.1104

Harnessing Nurse Informatics to Facilitate Interventions Essay Paper