Outcome 3
Outcome three refers to us demonstrating skills in using patient care technologies, information systems, and communication devices that support safe nursing practice in a variety of healthcare settings. The Nursing Informatics class helped me to be able to do all of this. Before taking this course, I really did not understand what informatics was and that it even existed in nursing. As part of our learning, we were asked to do an annotated bibliography and research nursing informatics. From this, I found several articles that allowed me to learn more about nursing informatics and how it is helping to shape health care in our present day.
There are so many ways in which information systems has helped us to be able to better communicate with each other in the healthcare field. Physicians can now see any lab work, vital signs, medication lists, etc that have been recently done if documented in a given computer system. Health care has come a long way but still has a ways to go. Having one big system that can be accessed in any hospital or clinic would be the best way to allow proper communication and help to give the best care to the patients being treated. It would also need a way to only allow authorized personnel access to the confidential information.
I have only been a nurse for about five years and in this time the facility that I work for has gone from complete paper charting to complete electronic charting. It was rough during the transition and for awhile we had both paper and electronic charting which meant double the work that we usually did. It was a pain, but now we are able to access the patient’s information with the click of a mouse.
Another assignment that helped me to achieve this outcome was also in the Nursing Informatics course where we learned how to properly examine a website for credibility. With all of the information being put on the internet, it is easy to come across false information. Overall, the Nursing Informatics course has opened my eyes greatly and I feel that through this course, I have become a better nurse and caregiver. It has taught me to be open to learning new computer systems and machines that will help advance the health care field even further and I plan to apply this attitude towards my future nursing career.
Annotated Bibliography
Carroll, K., Bradford, A., Foster, M., Cato, J., & Jones, J. (2007). An emerging giant nursing informatics. Nursing Management, 39-42.
The authors start the article by discussing how unknown nursing informatics was a decade ago. Since then, there has been a substantial increase in the demand for nurses who have knowledge in informatics. It goes on to discuss that as the healthcare field continues to increase computer usage for data storage, nurses must be able to demonstrate proper computer competencies. Informatics theories and competencies have just begun to be incorporated into basic nursing associate and BSN degrees. The American Nursing Credentialing Center (ANCC) has begun to administer nursing informatics exams and certificates. The future goal of nursing is to have these technologies enhance nursing care and patient outcome.
Cipriano, P. (2011). The future of nursing and health IT: the quality elixir. Nursing Economics, 29(5), 286-289.
The author, Judy Murphy, RN, FACMI, FHIMSS, started this article by discussing how nurses can help lead the transformation of health care and that this can only be achieved through the application of health information technologies. The article then goes on to discuss the links between health information technology (IT) and an increase in safer, efficient and effective health care. It talks about the future goals of health IT, which is focused on advancing the use of clinical decision support and continuing to build the evidence base for practice. It also lists eight recommendations that have opportunities to advance the use of health IT: remove scope-of-practice barriers, expand opportunities for nurses to lead and diffuse collaborative improvement efforts, implement nurse residency programs, increase proportion of nurses with BSN degrees to 80%, double the number of nurses with a doctorate by 2020, ensure that nurses engage in lifelong learning, prepare and enable nurses to lead change and advance health, and build an infrastructure to collect and analyze health care workforce data. She concludes by pointing out that health IT will help us revolutionize nursing for the future.
Ericksen, A. B. (2009). Informatics: the future of nursing. RN, 34-37.
The author discusses the evolvement of EHR’s since the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 was set in place by President Obama. Research indicates that only 8% of the five thousand hospitals in the nation are currently using computerized charting. There has been a significant growth of nurses in informatics. The article continues to discuss that there are several universities that offer advanced degrees in informatics. It also points out that the jobs held by nursing informaticists have changed. An HIMSS survey shows that the average annual salary for a nurse informaticist has increased as much as fourteen thousand dollars in three years. Anne Ericksen continues to write that nurses involved in informatics have the greatest impact on patient safety. Nursing informatics will continue to evolve rapidly and offer exciting opportunities.
McCormick, K.A., Delany, C.J., Flatley, B., Effken, J.A., Kendrick, K., Murphy, J., ... Westra, B.L. (2007). Guideposts to the future – an agenda for nursing informatics. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 14(1), 19-24.
The article starts out by giving a background of nursing informatics and notes anticipated changes relate to: demographics, health care quality and costs, health care informatics, the potential impact of genomic medicine on clinical practice, and the impact of new threats on society. The article continues to discuss that nurses play a key role in developing information systems to help improve the quality of care. Education is needed and programs will need to include education on nursing informatics to help prepare future nurses. As of 2001, there were at least twelve masters programs in the United States that offer a major in nursing informatics. This article goes on to point out that the nation will need more federal research and training resources to accommodate the growing field of informatics and to improve health care quality. Nurses staff the majority of Clinical Research Organizations (CROs). The research completed by nurses empowers health care practitioners and families.
Rollins, G. (2007). Nurses find new calling in information technology. H&HN, 16-17.
This article goes over the increasing number of nurses leaving the bedside and entering the field of clinical informatics. The author, Gina Rollins, writes about a 2004 survey by the Health Resources and Services Administration that noted an estimated 8,750 RN’s who identified themselves as nurse informaticist. Further reports show that members of American Nursing Informatics Association have doubled in the last three years. Nurses are able to bring a level of credibility to informatics that IS personnel alone cannot bring because they have nursing knowledge and experience and see how things directly correlate with each other to improve patient care. The article concludes by pointing out that nurses working in informatics have improved clinical information systems, which more than makes up for the current shortage of nurses at the bedside.
Skiba, D.J. (2010). The future of nursing and the informatics agenda. Nursing Education Perspectives, 390-391.
The author, Diane J. Skiba, PhD, FAAN, FACMI, starts the article by discussing that nurses should practice to the full extent of their education training, that nurses should achieve higher levels of education and training through an improved education system, and the nurses should be full partners with physicians and other health care professionals in redesigning health care in the United States. Informatics knowledge, skills, and attitudes are integral to this. The author continues to stress how crucial it is that nurses at all levels become informatics literate to function within the health care delivery system. Informatics knowledge, skills, and attitudes must be integrated into nursing curriculum in order for nurses to become literate in informatics. The material is very informative and brings to attention the need of more integration of informatics into nursing curriculum.
Website Critique Assignment
I chose to evaluate the MedlinePlus website. I will evaluate this website on accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency, coverage, visibility, and cost.
Accuracy
MedlinePlus is owned by National Institutes of Health (NIH). The health information provided on the site is produced and maintained by the National Library of Medicine. There is a place provided to contact someone from the MedlinePlus website if desired, however it does not specify an individual person that you will be contacting. The purpose of the website is to provide information about diseases, conditions, and wellness issues to patients and their families in a language that they can understand (About MedlinePlus, 2011). The articles provided are written by various authors of other reputable organizations. After looking through several articles I was able to determine that author information for each article is available.
Authority
As stated above, some of the documents published are from the webmaster, which is the National Library of Medicine, and others are different authors from reputable organizations. The publisher reports where they are from, such as the Division of Infectious Diseases, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, etc.
Objectivity
I was able to determine that the site is not a mask for advertising and does not endorse any company or product. You can use MedlinePlus to learn about the latest treatments, look up information on a drug or supplement, find out the meanings of words, or view medical videos or illustrations. You can also get links to the latest medical research on your topic or find out about clinical trials on a disease or condition. I feel that the information presented is accurate and easy to understand. You can also search further into articles, journals, etc and find more in depth information as well. No opinions are expressed by the author, just medical facts and information.
Currency
The medical encyclopedias are updated monthly, the Health Topics pages are reviewed at least every six months with new links added daily. There are two dates in the footer of every Health Topic page: the "Date last updated" which indicates when information was added to or removed from that page, and the "Topic last reviewed" which indicates when the entire topic was systematically reviewed (MedlinePlus FAQ, 2010). I did not notice any outdated information on the pages that I viewed.
Coverage
I noted a good balance of text and images on the pages that I viewed. As I searched the website, I did not notice that I needed to download any special software or programs to view any of the content. Most of the website is free for everyone to view. I did not notice an option for text only, or frames, or a suggested browser for better viewing.
Appearance
Overall, I felt that the appearance of the website was very well laid out. There is a big bar at the top of the screen that allows you to search for a certain topic; there are also three main bars on the site that you can click on: Health Topics, Drugs and Supplements, and Videos and Cool Tools. I think that it is user friendly and easy to navigate.
Cost
As mentioned earlier, the primary purpose of the Web page is educational and not to sell a product or service. Most content is available at no charge to the user.
Conclusion
Overall I feel that the MedlinePlus website is a great site to refer patients and their families to. I have used it previously to quickly refer to certain disease, etc but feel that I will continue to use it more in depth now that I have seen all that it has to offer. It is easy to read, navigate, and contains up to date material and information from credible sources.
References:
About MedlinePlus (2011, September 7). Retrieved March 3, 2012 from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/aboutmedlineplus.html
HONcode (2011, April 4). Health on the net foundation. Retrieved March 3, 2012 from http://www.hon.ch/HONcode/Conduct.html
Kapoun, Jim (2010, June 28). Five criteria for evaluating Web pages. Retrieved March 3, 2012 from http://olinuris.library.cornell.edu/ref/research/webcrit.html
MedlinePlus FAQ (2012, December 8). Retrieved March 3, 2012 from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/faq/updateschedule.html
There are so many ways in which information systems has helped us to be able to better communicate with each other in the healthcare field. Physicians can now see any lab work, vital signs, medication lists, etc that have been recently done if documented in a given computer system. Health care has come a long way but still has a ways to go. Having one big system that can be accessed in any hospital or clinic would be the best way to allow proper communication and help to give the best care to the patients being treated. It would also need a way to only allow authorized personnel access to the confidential information.
I have only been a nurse for about five years and in this time the facility that I work for has gone from complete paper charting to complete electronic charting. It was rough during the transition and for awhile we had both paper and electronic charting which meant double the work that we usually did. It was a pain, but now we are able to access the patient’s information with the click of a mouse.
Another assignment that helped me to achieve this outcome was also in the Nursing Informatics course where we learned how to properly examine a website for credibility. With all of the information being put on the internet, it is easy to come across false information. Overall, the Nursing Informatics course has opened my eyes greatly and I feel that through this course, I have become a better nurse and caregiver. It has taught me to be open to learning new computer systems and machines that will help advance the health care field even further and I plan to apply this attitude towards my future nursing career.
Annotated Bibliography
Carroll, K., Bradford, A., Foster, M., Cato, J., & Jones, J. (2007). An emerging giant nursing informatics. Nursing Management, 39-42.
The authors start the article by discussing how unknown nursing informatics was a decade ago. Since then, there has been a substantial increase in the demand for nurses who have knowledge in informatics. It goes on to discuss that as the healthcare field continues to increase computer usage for data storage, nurses must be able to demonstrate proper computer competencies. Informatics theories and competencies have just begun to be incorporated into basic nursing associate and BSN degrees. The American Nursing Credentialing Center (ANCC) has begun to administer nursing informatics exams and certificates. The future goal of nursing is to have these technologies enhance nursing care and patient outcome.
Cipriano, P. (2011). The future of nursing and health IT: the quality elixir. Nursing Economics, 29(5), 286-289.
The author, Judy Murphy, RN, FACMI, FHIMSS, started this article by discussing how nurses can help lead the transformation of health care and that this can only be achieved through the application of health information technologies. The article then goes on to discuss the links between health information technology (IT) and an increase in safer, efficient and effective health care. It talks about the future goals of health IT, which is focused on advancing the use of clinical decision support and continuing to build the evidence base for practice. It also lists eight recommendations that have opportunities to advance the use of health IT: remove scope-of-practice barriers, expand opportunities for nurses to lead and diffuse collaborative improvement efforts, implement nurse residency programs, increase proportion of nurses with BSN degrees to 80%, double the number of nurses with a doctorate by 2020, ensure that nurses engage in lifelong learning, prepare and enable nurses to lead change and advance health, and build an infrastructure to collect and analyze health care workforce data. She concludes by pointing out that health IT will help us revolutionize nursing for the future.
Ericksen, A. B. (2009). Informatics: the future of nursing. RN, 34-37.
The author discusses the evolvement of EHR’s since the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 was set in place by President Obama. Research indicates that only 8% of the five thousand hospitals in the nation are currently using computerized charting. There has been a significant growth of nurses in informatics. The article continues to discuss that there are several universities that offer advanced degrees in informatics. It also points out that the jobs held by nursing informaticists have changed. An HIMSS survey shows that the average annual salary for a nurse informaticist has increased as much as fourteen thousand dollars in three years. Anne Ericksen continues to write that nurses involved in informatics have the greatest impact on patient safety. Nursing informatics will continue to evolve rapidly and offer exciting opportunities.
McCormick, K.A., Delany, C.J., Flatley, B., Effken, J.A., Kendrick, K., Murphy, J., ... Westra, B.L. (2007). Guideposts to the future – an agenda for nursing informatics. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 14(1), 19-24.
The article starts out by giving a background of nursing informatics and notes anticipated changes relate to: demographics, health care quality and costs, health care informatics, the potential impact of genomic medicine on clinical practice, and the impact of new threats on society. The article continues to discuss that nurses play a key role in developing information systems to help improve the quality of care. Education is needed and programs will need to include education on nursing informatics to help prepare future nurses. As of 2001, there were at least twelve masters programs in the United States that offer a major in nursing informatics. This article goes on to point out that the nation will need more federal research and training resources to accommodate the growing field of informatics and to improve health care quality. Nurses staff the majority of Clinical Research Organizations (CROs). The research completed by nurses empowers health care practitioners and families.
Rollins, G. (2007). Nurses find new calling in information technology. H&HN, 16-17.
This article goes over the increasing number of nurses leaving the bedside and entering the field of clinical informatics. The author, Gina Rollins, writes about a 2004 survey by the Health Resources and Services Administration that noted an estimated 8,750 RN’s who identified themselves as nurse informaticist. Further reports show that members of American Nursing Informatics Association have doubled in the last three years. Nurses are able to bring a level of credibility to informatics that IS personnel alone cannot bring because they have nursing knowledge and experience and see how things directly correlate with each other to improve patient care. The article concludes by pointing out that nurses working in informatics have improved clinical information systems, which more than makes up for the current shortage of nurses at the bedside.
Skiba, D.J. (2010). The future of nursing and the informatics agenda. Nursing Education Perspectives, 390-391.
The author, Diane J. Skiba, PhD, FAAN, FACMI, starts the article by discussing that nurses should practice to the full extent of their education training, that nurses should achieve higher levels of education and training through an improved education system, and the nurses should be full partners with physicians and other health care professionals in redesigning health care in the United States. Informatics knowledge, skills, and attitudes are integral to this. The author continues to stress how crucial it is that nurses at all levels become informatics literate to function within the health care delivery system. Informatics knowledge, skills, and attitudes must be integrated into nursing curriculum in order for nurses to become literate in informatics. The material is very informative and brings to attention the need of more integration of informatics into nursing curriculum.
Website Critique Assignment
I chose to evaluate the MedlinePlus website. I will evaluate this website on accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency, coverage, visibility, and cost.
Accuracy
MedlinePlus is owned by National Institutes of Health (NIH). The health information provided on the site is produced and maintained by the National Library of Medicine. There is a place provided to contact someone from the MedlinePlus website if desired, however it does not specify an individual person that you will be contacting. The purpose of the website is to provide information about diseases, conditions, and wellness issues to patients and their families in a language that they can understand (About MedlinePlus, 2011). The articles provided are written by various authors of other reputable organizations. After looking through several articles I was able to determine that author information for each article is available.
Authority
As stated above, some of the documents published are from the webmaster, which is the National Library of Medicine, and others are different authors from reputable organizations. The publisher reports where they are from, such as the Division of Infectious Diseases, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, etc.
Objectivity
I was able to determine that the site is not a mask for advertising and does not endorse any company or product. You can use MedlinePlus to learn about the latest treatments, look up information on a drug or supplement, find out the meanings of words, or view medical videos or illustrations. You can also get links to the latest medical research on your topic or find out about clinical trials on a disease or condition. I feel that the information presented is accurate and easy to understand. You can also search further into articles, journals, etc and find more in depth information as well. No opinions are expressed by the author, just medical facts and information.
Currency
The medical encyclopedias are updated monthly, the Health Topics pages are reviewed at least every six months with new links added daily. There are two dates in the footer of every Health Topic page: the "Date last updated" which indicates when information was added to or removed from that page, and the "Topic last reviewed" which indicates when the entire topic was systematically reviewed (MedlinePlus FAQ, 2010). I did not notice any outdated information on the pages that I viewed.
Coverage
I noted a good balance of text and images on the pages that I viewed. As I searched the website, I did not notice that I needed to download any special software or programs to view any of the content. Most of the website is free for everyone to view. I did not notice an option for text only, or frames, or a suggested browser for better viewing.
Appearance
Overall, I felt that the appearance of the website was very well laid out. There is a big bar at the top of the screen that allows you to search for a certain topic; there are also three main bars on the site that you can click on: Health Topics, Drugs and Supplements, and Videos and Cool Tools. I think that it is user friendly and easy to navigate.
Cost
As mentioned earlier, the primary purpose of the Web page is educational and not to sell a product or service. Most content is available at no charge to the user.
Conclusion
Overall I feel that the MedlinePlus website is a great site to refer patients and their families to. I have used it previously to quickly refer to certain disease, etc but feel that I will continue to use it more in depth now that I have seen all that it has to offer. It is easy to read, navigate, and contains up to date material and information from credible sources.
References:
About MedlinePlus (2011, September 7). Retrieved March 3, 2012 from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/aboutmedlineplus.html
HONcode (2011, April 4). Health on the net foundation. Retrieved March 3, 2012 from http://www.hon.ch/HONcode/Conduct.html
Kapoun, Jim (2010, June 28). Five criteria for evaluating Web pages. Retrieved March 3, 2012 from http://olinuris.library.cornell.edu/ref/research/webcrit.html
MedlinePlus FAQ (2012, December 8). Retrieved March 3, 2012 from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/faq/updateschedule.html