Title: Nursing informatics: The EHR and beyond - American Nurse
Headings: Nursing informatics: The EHR and beyond
Nursing informatics: The EHR and beyond
Informatics nurses increase efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance patients’ lives.
Takeaways:
Background
Healthcare impact
Specialty insight
Clinical experience
Training and education
Roles and responsibilities
Where can you work?
Compensation
Networking and membership
Build a network
The future of informatics nursing
Tanna L. Nelson is a nursing informatics specialist at Texas Health Resources Dallas-Fort Worth and 2018 American Nursing Informatics Association (ANIA) Chapter President. Cheryl D. Parker is a clinical assistant professor and educational technology specialist at the University of Texas at Tyler School of Nursing and 2019 president-elect of the ANIA National Board of Directors.
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Content: As a result, implementations escalated across the nation, and informatics nurses have since been on the frontlines of EHR application and optimization to improve patient care and enhance clinician experience. Since the adoption of EHRs, healthcare technology continues to advance, and informatics nurses’ roles are evolving quickly. Organizations are moving past implementation-related strategies to focus on trimming documentation burdens, streamlining processes for high reliability, and identifying the EHRs’ true value by generating new knowledge and improving care through evidence-based practice. Healthcare impact
Informatics nurses embrace the use of data generated from EHRs to support knowledge and wisdom development. Before digitization, data were extracted manually, an expensive and time-consuming process. Using EHRs and other clinical systems, informatics nurses can gather data rapidly, creating opportunities for innovation. Because they are well positioned to recognize healthcare gaps and find transformative ways to guide practice, informatics nurses lead initiatives that improve patient well-being. At John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, informatics nurses developed and operationalized an algorithm for recognizing intimate partner violence and red flags for human trafficking. The algorithm fits seamlessly into the emergency department (ED) nurse workflow, provides step-by-step instructions to the nurse, and includes a narrative to use if the patient screens as positive. Patients are offered assistance immediately.