Healthcare Practice Application Discussion Paper

Reflect on the concepts of informatics and knowledge work as presented in the Resources.
Consider a hypothetical scenario based on your own healthcare practice or organization that would require or benefit from the access/collection and application of data. Your scenario may involve a patient, staff, or management problem or gap.

The Application of Data to Problem-Solving

Informatics presents an opportunity for integrating medical science with other information and analytical sciences to identify, define, manage, and communicate information, data, wisdom and knowledge in medical practice. Through the use of informatics, medical personnel are able to make sense of large available medical data collected from many sources (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2018). Healthcare Practice Application Discussion Paper  Informatics helps to bridge the gap between the technical and clinical aspects of health care through presenting a platform for the different stakeholder to work across the care continuum. It helps with translation and innovation activities focused on amplifying the voices of stakeholders and creating opportunities to manage medical economic and business objectives (Saba & McCormick, 2015).

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For instance, a medical facility identifies that it is performing poorly on incidences of hospital falls and occurrence of pressure ulcers among inpatients based on data presented in the dashboard. The facility identifies that the issue is of concern because the it has higher incidences of hospital falls and pressure ulcers among inpatients when compared to its targeted performance and other medical facilities. Given this awareness, informatics would be leveraged to better understand the problem in terms of deviation from objectives. In addition, informatics would be used to identify the specific cause of the problem, such as a shortage of nurse personnel resulting in unfavorable nurse-to-patient ratios so that patients are left unattended for long periods of time. Besides that, informatics would help in modeling different nurse-to-patient ratios for effects on incidences of patient falls and pressure ulcers as well as financial implications. Using the information presented by informatics, it becomes possible to present a viable and effective solution to the problem so that incidences of patient falls and pressure ulcers are reduced to acceptable levels. Overall, informatics offers opportunities for making sense of medical data and turning it into useful and actionable information that can achieve targeted objectives.

References

McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. (2018). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4^th ed.). Jones and Bartlett Learning.

Saba, V., & McCormick, K. (2015). Essentials of nursing informatics (6^th ed.). McGraw-Hill.  Healthcare Practice Application Discussion Paper