Essay NR541-61608 Week 2 Interview with NI Practitioner LT

NR541-61608 Week 2 Interview with NI Practitioner LT

NR541-61608 Week 2 Interview with NI Practitioner LT

Interview With NI Practitioner

In modern nursing practice, informatics nurse specialists (INS) aid in increasing quality and safety by adopting and implementing evidence-based interventions (Harrington, 2016). However, American Nursing Association (ANA) recognizes the scope, standards, and key functional areas of nursing informatics (NI) based on current needs, trends, technological interventions, and practice. Thus, the scope of NI covers information management, data identification, gathering, processing, analysis, and communicating in a meaningful manner. Further, their dynamic roles cover management, planning, collaboration, leadership, resource utilization, decision-making, policy development, and other areas (ANA, 2014). The purpose of the paper is to assess the importance of INS, functions of INS, the influence of current scope and standards of NI, and finding the relationship between INS roles and practice by conducting an interview with INS. Further, the paper includes a summary of the interview, analysis of interview and comparison with actual practice, and conclusion based on the analysis and future needs and the trends. 

A semi-structured interview style was adopted with open-ended questions as the role and specialty has dynamic aspects to them and the style helps in gaining better insights into the role and actual practice (Kallio et al., 2016). Barbara Hutchinson, a clinical informatics specialist, who works for Aveta Health System was interviewed on a videoconference. She was selected as she has vast experience in the field and has a master’s degree in the field of NI specialty and spearheading clinical informatics unit.  NR512-11470 Week 7 Narrated Power Point Presentation LT

NR541-61608 Week 2 Interview with NI Practitioner LT

Interview Results

The interview included questions and open-ended follow-up questions about the importance of nurse informatics, skills required to become an INS, technological interventions, dynamic aspect of health care needs, meaningfully analyzing and interpreting data, creating tools and apps based on evidence and data to increase the quality of care. The interviewee highlighted four major themes that modern INS should consider to practice effectively. Data analytics by using advanced technologies such as data synthesis, forecast, predictive modeling, machine learning, and software development as the first category (Booth, 2016). The second major theme was to collaborate with stakeholders such as nurses, patients, suppliers, administrators, and IT professionals to design, build, implement, and analyze outcomes of systems for electronic health record systems (EHRs); developing error reporting system to reduce medication, prescription, and dispensing errors and using dashboards to analyze the performance of units, hospital, and professionals by establishing interprofessional and multi-disciplinary communication. Thus, one of the three primary NI functional areas is analyzing data specific to an organization by using the right model and tool by collaborating with other professionals to understand clinical data and add assumptions and appropriation to plan and develop the right tools (Booth, 2016). Both ANA (2015) and ANA (2020) considered assessment, diagnosis, identification, planning, implementation, coordination, and collaboration as key areas. 

The third major theme was the need for leadership qualities specific for INS as data analysis requires accurate decision-making, which is critical in adopting the right strategies (Lee, 2016). Barbara raised concerns about the overdependence on data where clinical data and theoretical assumptions and analysis may create issues such as poor ethical and shared decision-making, under or overutilization of resources, and miscommunication between different health care professionals due to knowledge gap. Thus, coordinated activities, EBP research, leadership, and planning acts as critical processes (Darvish et al., 2016). The approach aid in defining the clinical workflow, improving quality and safety, and increasing efficiency as shared knowledge and accurate data interpretation from the right perspective leads to meaningful data (Ozkaynak et al., 2016). Thus, the second primary NI functional area is to develop leadership qualities and implement professional practice evaluation, which is under the scope and standards of ANA’s guideline (ANA, 2015). 

NR541-61608 Week 2 Interview with NI Practitioner LT

The fourth major factor was educating and training nurses and other health care professionals (HCPs) to effectively adopt the new system or application to achieve desired outcomes (Okunji, 2019). Barbara highlighted that the knowledge gap in computer skills, data interpretation, and information technology in other HCPs reduces the effectiveness of planned activities or implementation of tools or apps. Thus, every NIS should educate peers and HCPs to successfully implement the results obtained from informatics analysis (Hussey & Kennedy, 2021). Education and quality of practice are integrated as the third important area for INS as ANA includes both the aspects including consultation as areas (ANA, 2015). 

Analysis

Barbara provided detailed insights into similarities and differences between published descriptions of NI functional areas and actual practice functional areas. The similarities include administration, management, leadership as INS head nurse informatics to collect data and process it to propose models to plan for changes to improve organizational activities. However, in practice areas, decisions cannot be taken based on data alone as the importance of trends, environment, and other external aspects such as COVID-19 (Su et al., 2021), technological interventions, and federal regulations play an important role in practice. Thus, transformational leadership theory is critical as it includes influence, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and individual consideration to address different internal and external aspects (Kapu & Jones, 2016). 

The second major similarity is collaboration, coordination, and consultation as INS collaborate with patients, nurses, administrators, suppliers, and other HCPs to optimize different processes such as resource planning, nurse workflow, nurse to patient ratio, cost analysis, hospital statistics such as patient count, satisfaction level in nurses and patients, mortality rate, hospital-acquired infections, and other details. For example, Maslow’s hierarchical need theory or model can be included along with analytics to understand the needs and fulfillment (Su et al., 2021). The theory of self-efficacy and resilience can also be integrated to optimize work hours and scheduling to create a better work culture. However, the major difference is that nursing standards do not include aspects such as burnout, quality of life, and organizational constraints in it whereas they are critical during practice (Djourova et al., 2019). Other similarities include resource utilization, health teaching, EBP, quality of practice, and communication and the other differences include the issue of knowledge gap in HCPs, the economics involved in implementing EBP, technological, and planning interventions, and ethical issues faced by the INS in the actual practice setting. 

NR541-61608 Week 2 Interview with NI Practitioner LT

Conclusion

Based on the interview analysis of clinical informatics specialists, actual practice setting, scopes and standards published by ANA in 2015 and 2020, and nursing theories, it is evident that the role and responsibilities of INS are key in areas such as data analysis, project management, education and consultation, interprofessional collaboration, ethic-based shared decision-making, use of advanced tools and apps for analysis, implementing EBP interventions, and professional practice evaluation in increasing quality and safety of care. Even though the scopes and standards define the majority of practice and professional competencies, but INS faces different challenges during practice and they affect the outcome. 

References

ANA. (2014). Nursing informatics (2nd ed.).

ANA. (2015). Scope and standards of nursing informatics practice (2nd ed.). American Nurses Association.

ANA. (2020). The scope of practice for nursing informatics (3rd ed.). ANA.

Booth, R. (2016). Informatics and nursing in a post-nursing informatics world: future directions for nurses in an automated, artificially-intelligent, social-networked healthcare environment. Canadian Journal Of Nursing Leadership, 28(4), 61-69. https://doi.org/10.12927/cjnl.2016.24563

Darvish, A., Bahramnezhad, F., Keyhanian, S., & Navidhamidi, M. (2016). The role of nursing informatics on promoting quality of health care and the need for appropriate education. Global Journal Of Health Science, 6(6). https://doi.org/10.5539/gjhs.v6n6p11

NR541-61608 Week 2 Interview with NI Practitioner LT

Djourova, N., Molina, I., Santamatilde, N., & Abate, G. (2019). Self-efficacy and resilience: mediating mechanisms in the relationship between the transformational leadership dimensions and well-being. Journal Of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 27(3), 256-270. https://doi.org/10.1177/1548051819849002

Harrington, L. (2016). American nurses association releases new scope and standards of nursing informatics practice. AACN Advanced Critical Care, 26(2), 93-96. https://doi.org/10.4037/nci.0000000000000065

Hussey, P., & Kennedy, M. (2021). Health informatics standards. Health Informatics, 139-174. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58740-6_6

Kallio, H., Pietilä, A., Johnson, M., & Kangasniemi, M. (2016). Systematic methodological review: developing a framework for a qualitative semi-structured interview guide. Journal Of Advanced Nursing, 72(12), 2954-2965. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.13031

Kapu, A., & Jones, P. (2016). APRN transformational leadership. Nursing Management, 47(2), 19-22. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.numa.0000479443.75643.2b

Lee, A. (2016). The role of informatics in nursing. Nursing Made Incredibly Easy!, 12(4), 55. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.nme.0000450294.60987.00

Okunji, P. (2019). Nursing Informatics. Cognella, Inc.

Ozkaynak, M., Unertl, K., Johnson, S., Brixey, J., & Haque, S. (2016). Clinical workflow analysis, process redesign, and quality improvement. Clinical Informatics Study Guide, 135-161. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22753-5_7

Su, Z., McDonnell, D., & Li, Y. (2021). Why is COVID-19 more deadly to nursing home residents?. QJM: An International Journal Of Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1093/qjmed/hcaa343