Nursing Informatics and the Nurse Informaticist

 
Nursing Informatics in Health Care
Technological advances in healthcare have considerably influenced healthcare operationalizations and care approaches. Thus, it is imperative for nurses and other healthcare providers to familiarize themselves with these technologies. Nursing informatics bridges the gap in technological knowledge deficits by facilitating technology use among nurses. Knowing these technologies will ensure that nurses provide optimal, patient-centered, and timely interventions to their patients. This paper analyzes nursing informatics in healthcare, emphasizing the role of nurse informaticists, how nurse informaticists interact with other healthcare organizations, and the opportunities and challenges of integrating a nurse informaticist into interdisciplinary care teams.

Nursing informatics is a nursing discipline committed to quality patient care delivery through efficient and effective management of hospitals’ technical systems and data. Khezri & Abdekhoda (2019) describe nursing informatics as the practice and science under the nursing discipline that incorporates nursing information with technology to manage health data. Nursing informatics plays a role in reducing healthcare costs while improving healthcare outcomes. Its ability to leverage existing and emerging technologies and utilize them in managing health information makes it integral to overall care provision.

Nursing informaticists are specialists in nursing informatics. The American Medical Informatics Association outlines core areas where nurse informaticists work. They work as developers and designers of health information technologies to facilitate the flow of health information within the healthcare system. Due to their vast knowledge of various healthcare technologies, they act as educators, educating nurses and other members of interdisciplinary healthcare teams on existing health information technologies. They also act as researchers in healthcare with the mandate of working on research methodologies to convey new healthcare knowledge and evidence-based best practices into practice (Haupeltshofer et al., 2020). Nurse informaticists also play a role in presenting information and retrieving approaches that inform safe and patient-centered approaches to care. These diverse roles of nurse informaticists point to the need for this organization to consider this option.
Nurse Informaticists and Other Health Care Organizations
An exploration of other organizations’ experiences with nurse informaticists reinforces the significance of nurses informaticists in healthcare. Eastlane Hospital is a classic example of a hospital that has benefited considerably from integrating nurse informaticists. The hospital initially had trouble integrating electronic health records into its system. The hospital administration noted that the hospital employees complained of not understanding the system. Accordingly, the recruitment of a nurse informaticist team to the hospital and their subsequent incorporation into the clinical team saw them educate the hospital employees on the new technology.

Interactions between nurse informaticists and other organizational members were challenging at first. This was because the members did not seem to understand the roles of a nurse informaticist, and role confusion between nurse informaticists and the hospital IT team was evident. However, this was resolved by the development of an operationalization framework that saw nurse informaticists bridge communication processes between the IT department and the interdisciplinary healthcare teams. As healthcare technologies continue to emerge, having nurse informaticists in this organization will ensure seamless integration and transition into these technologies. This highlights the need for nurse informaticists in this organization.