Information and information processing

Information and information processing

Respond to this post with a positive response :

Ask questions to help clarify the scenario and application of data, or offering additional/alternative ideas for the application of nursing informatics principles.

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Nurses rely on gathered information, statistics, and trends to help them in their day to day operations. Nurse managers rely on what is trending when it comes to Performance Improvement. The trending information helps the nurse manager pinpoint where the trouble lies and able to go to the source of the problem and educate the staff and fix the problem. For example, during chart audits, it has come to the attention of the auditor that the smoking cessation education check box has been missed in about 50% of the charts that were checked. This data that was collected was entered into a computer program to break down and pinpoint what area of the hospital it was coming from or from whom. This information was given to the nurse manager to share with the staff from which this trend had occurred. Education was able to be given to correct this problem. Information and information processing are central to the healthcare worker. A healthcare professional is also known as a knowledge worker because he or she deals with and processes information on a daily basis to make it meaningful and inform his or her practice (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2018, p. 21). Nurses have to have a knowledge base in order to do the basics of nursing. Most of the knowledge that a nurse will further acquire is on the job. Such as the scenario given above, nurses have to be trained in the policy and procedures of their facility. Gathering information to be able to educate nurses on what is missing in there charting or other paperwork that is required of them is helpful to create proficient nurses.

Healthcare informatics is defined as “the integration of healthcare sciences, computer sciences, information science, and cognitive science to assist management of healthcare information (Sweeney, 2017). By gathering the data, we were able to break it down and create a bar graph of each unit and how many unchecked boxes for the smoking education that did not get done correctly. We could see if any one nurse was trending and gave direction on how to proceed with the educating of the staff. This information came from our PI department to the nurse managers then down to the staff for correcting. According to N. L. Nagle et al., knowledge innovation and generation provides guidance and support to others (nurses, patients) in the application and use of emerging knowledge… (Nagle, Junger, & Bloomberg, 2017, p. 219).

References

McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2018). Nursing Informatics and the Foundation of Knowledge (4 ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning.

Nagle, L. M., Junger, A., & Bloomberg, L. S. (2017). Evolving Role of the Nursing Informatics Specialist. Forecasting Informatics for Nurses in the Future of Connected Health, 212-221.

Sweeney, BSN, RN, J. (2017, Feb 2017). Healthcare Informatics. OJNI, 21.