1. Medicine has changed quickly with the advent of digital technologies that seek to increase healthcare effectiveness and safety. Consequently, the field of nursing informatics has grown, fusing professional knowledge, ICT, and nursing to improve patient outcomes (Reid et al., 2021). A description of nursing informatics helps nurses who are interested in the field clarify their duties and provides guidelines for practice, instruction, training, and research. Furthermore, a definition is an essential part of national scope documents for the nursing informatics specialty. the use of information technology for tasks performed by nurses as part of their duties and being under the purview of nursing. In other words, nursing informatics is the application of information technology by nurses in patient care, healthcare facility administration, or career education (Staggers, 2002). The field of nursing informatics blends nursing science with several information and analytical sciences to find, define, manage, and transfer data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice. For many people, the main focus of healthcare informatics in general and nursing informatics specifically is technology. One example is the need that all healthcare facilities to have electronic health records (Association, 2014). As nurse innovators, practicing nurses, nursing administrators, nurse researchers, and nurse educators are needed to design, plan, and coordinate the application of technology and informatics theory in nursing.
Nursing Informatics innovator 1- Patricia Abbott, PhD, RN, FAAN, FACMI
Dr. Abbott is an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Nursing. Before going to the University of Michigan School of Nursing, she was an Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and Medicine. She finished her two-year post-doctoral NIH-funded research fellowship at the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory (HCIL) at the University of Maryland College Park with success, focusing on the development of practical and error-reducing HIT. By focusing on visualization—the process of making sense of massive amounts of healthcare data in a useful way—human-computer interaction, and user-centered design, Dr. Abbott expanded her research interests at HCI. Her areas of interest in the study are data analytics and knowledge discovery in big datasets (Wieck, 2019).
Contributions influenced Health Information Technology
The early efforts of Dr. Abbott have contributed to the establishment of the Nursing Informatics Specialization. She was a member of the ANA’s original author team for the Scope and Standards of NI Practice and later collaborated with the ANCC to develop the first NI certification test. She was the Director of Graduate Programs in Nursing Informatics at the University of Maryland from 1998 to 2003 (Abbott, 2002).
Contributions Affected the Practice of Nursing
Dr. Abbott is dedicated to developing IT for low-resource settings so that nurses and other caregivers in remote locations may learn about health issues. Because of her work with knowledge networks intended for areas with limited bandwidth (WHO), she has collaborated with the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and the Rockefeller Foundation (Wieck, 2019). Dr. Abbott moved to the Hopkins School of Nursing in 2004 and started working for front-line healthcare providers in low-resource situations in global health informatics. She has worked in this field for most of her recent career, using low-bandwidth technologies and information management strategies to impact community health (Abbott,2002).
Nursing Informatics innovator-2-Patty Brennan, PhD, RN, FAAN, FACMI
Patricia Flatley Brennan, Ph.D., RN, is the director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health. NLM, the world’s biggest biomedical library, is a trailblazer in the domains of biomedical informatics and computational health data science. Since joining the company in 2016, she has positioned the NLM as a global scientific research library with evident and simple access to knowledge that is substantial, broadly applicable, comprehensible, and advantageous. This guarantees that researchers, policymakers, clinicians, patients, and members of the public have access to biological knowledge when they need it. Dr. Brennan is the first female head of the NLM, industrial engineer, and nurse. Her approach to merging machine learning, artificial intelligence, and deep learning with health data management to transform healthcare in the future is influenced by her unique career background (The National Institutes of Health [NIH],2022).
How Contributions Affected the Field of Health Technology
Patricia Flatley Brennan is the Lillian L. Moehlman Bascom Professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Engineering and Nursing. She is in charge of the national initiative of Project Health Design, a RWJ-funded project that aims to motivate the creation of the upcoming generation of personal health records. She was the president of AMIA before. In 2002, Dr. Brennan was election to the Institute of Medicine. According to the American Medical Informatics Association [AMIA], 2023, she is a fellow of both the American College of Medical Informatics (1993) and the American Academy of Nursing (1991). Dr. Brennan is concentrating on four cutting-edge patient-centered methods of health information delivery. Her lab develops interactive virtual reality experiences to help patients with complex, chronic conditions like diabetes and heart failure and their surroundings better understand one another. These simulations not only help patients improve their health outcomes and disease management skills by allowing them to practice problem-solving techniques, but they also contribute to our understanding of the sensory, behavioral, and cognitive processes that impact self-care (National Institute of Nursing Research,2022).
How Contributions Affected the Practice of Nursing
She developed ComputerLink, an electronic network designed to help patients getting home care feel less alone and take better care of themselves. She is currently the director of HeartCare, a personalized information and communication service based on the WWW that helps at-home cardiac patients recover faster and with fewer symptoms. She is in charge of the national initiative of Project Health Design, a RWJ-funded project that aims to motivate the creation of the upcoming generation of personal health records. Additionally, according to the American Medical Informatics Association [AMIA], 2023, she is in charge of the WI-TECNE project, a state-wide nursing faculty development effort that will improve the way informatics and telehealth are incorporated into nursing courses.
Lessons learned from the teachings.
I conclusion, I have learned a great deal of stuff that will be beneficial. Because technology is so vital to both my business and modern healthcare facilities, it is impossible to imagine operating either one without it. Health IT improves healthcare by altering currently used instruments, processes, and systems. The evidence that Nursing Informatics offers to improve patient care has contributed to and broadened understanding of the evidence-based practice about the development of computerized nursing. As the use of telemedicine, multidisciplinary information technologies, and electronic health records increases, nurses need to become more technically skilled in these areas. Evidence-based nursing informatics will allow organizations to lead the way in value-based care delivery.
2. The use of information technology is considered a fundamental part of health care. The utilization of electronic health records helped improve the nursing field by bridging the gap from nursing as a care provider to nursing as a science and profession (Garcia-Dia, 2021). This discussion focuses on sharing my experience with nursing informatics and explain how my informatics skills and competences can improve at the end of this course.
Experience with Nursing Informatics
As suggested by the American Nurses Association (2015), Nursing Informatics (NI) is a nursing specialty that integrates nursing science with multiple information and analytical sciences to identify, define, manage, and communicate information and knowledge. Information systems provide benefits not just from an economic perspective, but especially from a quality-of-care perspective (Al Najjar & Shafie, 2022). Examples of these benefits include decreased medical errors, timely diagnosis, efficient care services, enhanced communication among healthcare providers.
In my first nursing job in the United States, we used handheld computers to document vital signs, intake, and output. It eventually changed to electronic charting, such as customizing patient care plans. Electronic Medication Administration Record (eMAR) was later introduced to help decrease medication errors related to transcription errors, and the use of barcode medication administration (BCMA) to help reduce medication errors related to incorrect patient identity, drug form and dosage, and route of drug administration. Recent data from our organization’s Vigilanz safety reporting showed a significant reduction in medication related errors. Barakat and Franklin (2020) noted that the utilization of BCMA showed a significant increase in active patient identification and verification of medications that represent benefits to patient safety.
Informatics Skills and Competencies
Others may view digital technology as a distraction from the direct nursing care role and the nurse-patient therapeutic relationships. However, nursing informatics as a specialty, always advocated for the integration of technology to support the nursing profession (Booth et al., 2021). In this class, I aim to improve my informatics knowledge, skills, and competencies by learning and participating in discussions and assignments which allows the practical application and critical analysis of digital data and upcoming technologies that support quality improvement in healthcare. As an example, in my clinical practice, NI can help track patient outcomes, identify patient data trends, evaluate interventions, and measure nursing workload. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing or AACN (2006) suggested that Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) nurses can provide leadership for evidence-based practice (EBP) by creating a culture of inquiry, providing education and resources, facilitating collaboration and communication, and supporting change and innovation.
