NURS 6051 Discussion: Interaction Between Nurse Informaticists and Other Specialists
By Day 3 of Week 3
Post a description of experiences or observations about how nurse informaticists and/or data or technology specialists interact with other professionals within your healthcare organization. Suggest at least one strategy on how these interactions might be improved. Be specific and provide examples. Then, explain the impact you believe the continued evolution of nursing informatics as a specialty and/or the continued emergence of new technologies might have on professional interactions.
Working in a Correctional setting is quite unique. Our nurse who tracts informatics, as well as our data and technology specialists, work off-site at our Headquarters. We have very little interaction with them, however, we do send monthly statistics to our Informatics section. The information sent, includes total amount of medications administered, number of chronic care offenders, number of diabetic offenders, number of HIV offenders, number of individuals on antibiotics and why, total labs drawn, total nurse sick call visits, and total chronic care appointments. This information is compiled by nursing staff across the department and forwarded each month.
As the nurse who complies this data for us monthly, on strategy to improve these interactions would be to see the end product. We compile the information, and never see an end product. The end product is sent to the medical leadership, at Headquarters. As a nurse knowledge worker, who is generating information, there should be a return of knowledge or information to the end user (McGonigle & Mastrain, 2018). There should be more communication, as compared to the current communication, which is zero. Information, and informatics, is an important part of nursing, which should be used to improve overall patient health (Pordeli, 2018). As of now, there is no one closing the loop in the communication process. I am sure headquarters is tracking trends, however, as the end product user it would also be nice to see these trends.
It is hard to imagine the impact the continued evolution of nursing informatics, with the emergence of new technologies, will have on professional interactions. Our textbook discusses the future of nursing informatics and how rapidly new knowledge will be available, and how that may affect practice (McGonigle & Mastrain, 2018). One of those concepts was the “rapid-learning healthcare system” (McGonigle & Mastrain, 2018, p. 548). This discusses rapid changes in point of care, which is great, but how large hospitals keep up with this rapid change will be interesting to watch. It makes one wonder will there ever be a point where there is too much information, to many studies available. How will clinicians keep up to date with the most current best practices, when they will be available almost instantaneously? I know where I work, the saying is as long as you follow policy you are covered. Well, policy is slow to change.
I believe the evolution of nursing informatics will be difficult to keep up with, at best. In one of the articles we were supposed to read this week, it discussed how nursing informatics has grown from its original 21 competencies to “178 advanced skills in the Nursing Informatics Competency Assessment” (Sipes, 2016). How much more growth is to come? I also believe the continued evolution of technologies, will limit professional face to face interactions. I believe most of these interactions will go the way of online or phone calls. A great example of this is how UC Health, here in Colorado, has centralized all cardiac telemetry monitoring. All telemetry monitoring, for patients across the state, is done in one building in Denver. As a nurse, you place a patient on telemetry, call the telemetry monitors in Denver and let them know. They call you if something isn’t right, or if the batteries are going low. Someone 70 miles away is monitoring your patient. It works, but somehow feels unsettling at the same time.
Reference
McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. (2017). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Pordeli, L. (2018). Informatics competency-based assessment: Evaluations and determination of nursing informatics competency gaps among practicing nurse informaticists. On-Line Journal of Nursing Informatics, 22(3). https://www-proquest-com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/healthcomplete/docview/2175008349/
46833675E9884996PQ/1accountid=14872
Sipes, C. (2016). Project management: Essential skill of nurse informaticists. Studies in health technology and informatics, 225. https://ebooks-iospress-nl.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/publica
By Day 6 of Week 3
Respond to at least two of your colleagues* on two different days, offering one or more additional interaction strategies in support of the examples/observations shared or by offering further insight to the thoughts shared about the future of these interactions.
I could not agree with you more that the nurses collecting and reporting information should have access to the end product including the reports and trends. As the nurse working with the patients, the trends would be meaningful to you and you may be able to identify practices that are happening leading to those trends, where someone at headquarters can only make assumptions based on policies in place without ever seeing the actual workflows. We recently had this discussion at work with management. The staff have been collecting a ton of data and reporting to leadership to get certified as an age-friendly health care facility, but we never had the opportunity to see the data or to learn what the data showed.
I also feel some hesitation regarding the exponential expansion of technology in nursing. I have always heard the technology is only as good as its user. I see this now as the generational composition of nursing staff changes. Typically, seasoned nurses are more resistant to technology and have excellent assessment skills that enable them to provide accurate care even when no technology is available (Davis, 2017). Alternatively, newer nurses are trained with and comfortable with technology and often do not have the same hands-on skill set because those skills are not regularly used (Davis, 2017). Like you mentioned, technology limits actual face-to-face care. Bailey (2021) cites an advantage of technology and mobile monitoring, like the example you provided, enables nurses to multi-task and take on more responsibility. But, do we really want nurses to multi-task more than they already do? A fear I have is that technology will be used to try to make up for unsafe nurse-patient ratios, but technology is not infallible.
References
Bailey, S. (2021). How technology has changed the role of nursing. NurseJournal. https://nursejournal.org/articles/technology-changing-nursing-roles/#:~:text=Experts%20do%20not%20always%20agree%20on%20what%20the,more%20efficiently%2C%20and%20monitor%20conditions%20with%20complete%20confidence.
Davis, S. (2017). Generations in harmony. Nursing Made Incredibly Easy!, 15(2), 4. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NME.0000511847.93387.55
