The Impact of Nursing Informatics on Patient Outcomes and Patient Care Efficiencies
Review the concepts of technology application as presented in the Resources.
Reflect on how emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence may help fortify nursing informatics as a specialty by leading to increased impact on patient outcomes or patient care efficiencies.
The Assignment: (4-5 pages not including the title and reference page)
In a 4- to 5-page project proposal written to the leadership of your healthcare organization, propose a nursing informatics project for your organization that you advocate to improve patient outcomes or patient-care efficiency. Your project proposal should include the following:
Describe the project you propose.
Identify the stakeholders impacted by this project.
Explain the patient outcome(s) or patient-care efficiencies this project is aimed at improving and explain how this improvement would occur. Be specific and provide examples.
Identify the technologies required to implement this project and explain why.
Identify the project team (by roles) and explain how you would incorporate the nurse informaticist in the project team.
Use APA format and include a title page and reference page.
Table of Contents
Place your order today!
Solution
Nursing Informatics Project Proposal
Introduction
The application of technology in healthcare has enhanced the safety and cost-effectiveness of managing different health conditions(Wang et al., 2018). The management of non-communicable diseases requires these technologies to ensure improved patient outcomes. Non-communicable diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, osteoporosis among others require to follow-up, treatment, and detailed patient education(Moghani Lankarani and Assari, 2017). There is a need for nursing informatics in enhancing-efficiency of care offered to patients with chronic diseases. The application of technology in improving patient care within health facilities will be integral in managing lifestyle diseases by enhancing health literacy, awareness, follow-up, safety, and quality of care. This paper describes a proposed project regarding the application of nursing informatics in improving patient care.
Proposed Project
The proposed project is the use of systems, which will facilitate alerts to notify patients and care providers about clinic visits, drug refilling, or follow-up days. The author proposes that this project will ensure that patient receives alert services on their phones, applications, and monitoring devices. The alerts will entail details about follow-ups or other concerns regarding the treatment plan. During every visit at the healthcare facility, care providers will checkup the patient for BMI, DM, and hypertension. After making the diagnosis of lifestyle diseases, the nurse would enroll the patient for follow-up alerts. Besides, the nurse will ensure that the patient details are available and searchable in the systems. If not searchable, the patient may be visiting the hospital for the first time. The author proposes that the nurse will facilitate the examination of the patient by a doctor. The utilization of the alerts would ensure that patients and physicians learn about the clinic visit days and expectations such as repeat tests or investigations, drug refills, and progress monitoring.
Stakeholders Impacted By This Project
The project will impact the nurse leaders who will have a role in creating frameworks to allow nurses to propose evidence-based changes. Nurses leaders will need to create a data culture and forge new solutions to improve patient care. Besides, the nurse leadership would need to develop a systems-level method that defines structure and leadership to ensure nursing informatics solutions, which promote patient care. According to Mosier et al., (2019), nurse leaders should align clinical experts, informatics specialists to design, develop and implement informatics solutions.
The team of healthcare providers in the facilities will be among the stakeholder affected by the project. The team will need to work collaboratively to achieve successful developments and deployment of the nursing informatics solution. According to Mosier et al. (2019), principles, which guide the development of the solution, are respect to each profession, clear lines of responsibility, and commitment. With clear lines of responsibilities, healthcare professionals will ensure that they dedicate their expertise to different components of the project. For example, the leadership will steer the project to abide within the organization’s vision, scope and objectives. Besides, the leadership will be an arbitrator of any misunderstandings, which may arise due to conflicting priorities.
Other significant stakeholders impacted by this project are the end-users of the nursing informatics solutions. Patients will need to describe their expectations about the solutions, which seek to improve the management and outcomes of chronic diseases. Content and technical experts will need to define good practices and appropriate workflows for the informatics solutions. Mosier et al. (2019) highlight that technical experts should also design the technology solution to ensure that they meet the requirements, and use clinical decision-making support when needed. The role of testing the different aspects of the proposed nursing informatics solution bears on the technical experts.
Technologies Required to Implement This Project
The use of alert systems to notify patients and care providers about clinic visits will require the integration of standard servers and electronic medical records. The reason for incorporating the standard server is to ensure accuracy in the dissemination of the notifications or messages to the client and responsible care providers. By using existing computers, the [project team will ensure the cost-effectiveness of the solution implementation by avoiding purchases. The project will utilize the existing computers with the latest operating systems. The alert systems will be compatible to windows and operating systems to compatibility with hospital technology. The information technologists and stakeholders will undergo orientation regarding the use of the nursing informatics solution to ensure that they familiarize themselves with the different processes of the system.
The Project Team
The project team will include significant nurse leaders, organizational leadership, and informatics specialists. The nurse leadership will have a significant role in developing informatics solutions to promote better management of lifestyle and chronic diseases. The nurse leadership administrators including executives, managers, and specialists should use their broad knowledge and oversight of nursing care to ensure clear lines of responsibility, and commitment to achieve the project’s success. The nurse leader has the role of organizing, setting up, and owning the development of the informatics solution. Highlight the role of nurse administrators and informatics specialists in designing new solutions to improve the quality of nursing care.
Nurses should possess informatics competencies such as project management skills to help improve quality of care, safety, and patient experience. Informatics nurse specialists will integrate nursing science with knowledge analytical science to manage and disseminate information to relevant parties. During the project, there is a need for managing the organizational flow of work and the system. Specifically, the nurse manager will have roles in integrating, selecting, maintaining, and analyzing the impact of the project.
Project management skills are significant in every phase of a project(Sipes, 2016). Therefore, nurse managers should ensure that they possess management skills and competencies such as the development of a work plan, designing systems, leading projects, and implementing interventions. According to Sipes (2016), nurses and informatics nurse specialists would require management skills to support the implementation of electronic medical records. Besides, the skill will help informatics nurse specialists analyze the workflows of a new system.
The author would integrate the nursing informatics in the project team by assigning the members with clear roles specific to their potentials. For example, to the informatics nurse specialist, the author will ensure that they have a central role in supporting the use of the proposed solution in clinical practice. The nurse leaders will have opportunities to gain competencies in nursing informatics and make decisions regarding the solution.
References
Moghani Lankarani, M., & Assari, S. (2017).Diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and long-term risk of renal disease mortality: Racial and socioeconomic differences. Journal of diabetes investigation, 8(4), 590–599. https://doi.org/10.1111/jdi.12618
Mosier, S., Roberts, W. D., &Englebright, J. (2019).A systems-level method for developing nursing informatics solutions: the role of executive leadership. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 49(11), 543-548.
Sipes, C. (2016). Project management: essential skill of nurse informaticists.In Nursing Informatics 2016 (pp. 252-256).IOS Press.https://ebooks.iospress.nl/pdf/doi/10.3233/978-1-61499-658-3-252
Wang Y., Kung L., Byrd TA.(2018). Big data analytics: Understanding its capabilities and potential benefits for healthcare organizations, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 126, 3-13. https://www.ehidc.org/sites/default/files/resources/files/big%20data%20analytics.pdf
