The rapid evolution of technology has led to a significant transformation of nursing practices and operations. Nursing informatics is described as the combination of nursing science, information science, and computer science to manage and process nursing data, information, and knowledge to in order to facilitate efficient delivery of health care services (Ball & JA, 2006). Nursing informatics continues to provide a wide spectrum of benefits in the healthcare fraternity. By adopting various nursing informatics applications, nurses get equipped with well-organized data necessary for nursing management, practice, and research (Donaldson & Gerdin, 2000).
There are various applications, tools, and devices that have led to the significant quality improvement of healthcare management and services. Nursing informatics has been used as a form of electronic documentation which allows nurses to easily identify patients, their previous illnesses, and their health status. This allows nurses to monitor the patient’s condition by using the readily available health information of the patient (Smeldey, 2005). Essentially, nursing informatics allows nurses to get valuable information that helps them to provide better care to many patients. Some of the most notable nursing informatics applications include; Electronic Health Records (EHR), and Smart assistive tools (Ball & JA, 2006). EHR plays a critical role in providing a collection of qualitative, quantitative, and transactional data (Moen & Maeland, 2013). Using this application, a nurse can record and combine the patient’s data in real-time (Donaldson & Gerdin, 2000). This allows nurses to provide early interventions to prevent certain illnesses and manage existing health conditions. Nursing informatics is an integral technology that helps in facilitating the integration of data, information, and knowledge to support patients, nurses, and other providers in their decision-making in all roles and settings (Moen & Maeland, 2013)
References
Smedley, A. (2005). The importance of informatics competencies in nursing: An Australian perspective. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 23(2), 106-110.
Ball, M. J., & JA, E. M. (2006). Introduction to nursing informatics. New York: Springer.
Donaldson, S. K., & Gerdin, U. (2000). Nursing informatics: Where caring and technology meet. Springer Science & Business Media.
Moen, A., & Maeland Knudsen, L. M. (2013). Nursing informatics: Decades of contribution to health informatics. Healthcare Informatics Research, 19(2), 86-92.