Good Example Of Research Paper On The Future Of Nursing Informatics

Abstract

As new issues are arising in the sector of healthcare, there is need to adjust to cope with the provision of high quality services to the clients. There is therefore the need to come up with recommendations in the field of nursing to assist in the guidance of health care transformation. To achieve this, there is need to apply health information technology to help improve quality and safety in the field of heath and care efficiency. This research therefore discuss the recommendations that can be put in place to enhance the nursing workforce in provision of high quality care and leadership in the field of nursing and barriers towards the achievement of this, which needs to be overturned.

Introduction

Nursing informatics is involved in the integration of nursing science together with computer science and information science directed towards management and communication of data, information and new ideas in the field of nursing practice (Murphy 2010). Nursing informatics have diversified roles to play. They work as project managers and consultants. They also work as product developers, chief information officers and decision support managers. They are also involved in academic settings as educators, researchers and advocates. Administrative nursing are involved in the purchase of healthcare information systems. Chief nursing officers are involved in the provision of vision and management in clinical systems implementations. Nurses have variety of job opportunities as systems analysts, database administrators, project developers in the clinical environment. Looking in the emerging issues in the healthcare sector, there is the need to restructure the nursing informatics to adjust to the emerging trends. This has led to the discovery of new technologies in the field of nursing (Murphy, 2011). However, for the effective functioning of these technologies, there is the need to reconsider various sectors of healthcare. This is directed towards the provision of quality healthcare that assure the client good health after the provision of health services. This research therefore looks into the healthcare technology as a whole tackling the weaknesses and strength of the future of nursing informatics.

Environmental Changes Generating New Markets for Healthcare Informatics

For the improvement in nursing informatics in the future, there is need for the nursing professionals to view changes in the environment that bring new market to healthcare informatics. These changes include demographic changes, costs of healthcare and its quality, healthcare informatics, effects of genomic medicine and effects of new threats in the society.
Demographics; Demographics changes in the future will change the image of healthcare. In 2004, the U.S. Census Bureau stated an increase in the US population for people aged 65 years and above by 14,388,000 persons and number of 20 to 64 years old increasing by 6,380,000 between 2010 and 2020. Moreover, provision of healthcare to a population that is diverse culturally will have challenges to delivery mechanisms of traditional healthcare. The predicted population will include low constituents of non- Hispanic whites and more population from other groups. Therefore, the main shift in the demographic involve the older and society which is more diverse.
Quality of healthcare; Improvement in the healthcare quality remains the priority of the country. There is still a consistent demand of accountability by the consumers from the healthcare providers. The Home Health Compare Web has one time indicated the existence of outcomes differences within the providers of healthcare from various facilities of healthcare. There are still efforts to improve quality in the healthcare settings for the benefit of the health services beneficiaries. There are needs for formation of programs that are directed towards the improvement of quality of healthcare services in the country with the facilitation of enhancement and quality measurements by the information technology. Recommendations of neutral pay of budget for the performance programs represent a step forward action of appreciating providers that improved the quality.
Healthcare delivery cost; there are problems which are very persistent in the field of healthcare provision. These include unstable care cost, variations in practices, ignorance in care provision, duplicated efforts, and inequality in the access of healthcare. The healthcare cost is now a burden to the society and individual patients. The US population in 2004 had about 15.6% uninsured. Increase in the cost care increases the uninsured numbers. The number of nurses required will increase with Ohio and California states demanding for high number of nurses.
Informatics for healthcare; the upcoming development in technology will have some influence on the delivery of healthcare. There were discussion on the anticipated impacts of changes worldwide in hardware and soft wares in the computer generation and various technology applied by the nurses. Bioinformatics will emerge to provide support upcoming developments in genomic and genetic translational sciences. There will be need to train more nurses on how to apply both computational and informatics of bio medics.
Discoveries of genetics; Advancement in the knowledge for discovery of genes and genomes affects the healthcare future at each level in the diagnosis and prevention of diseases. There must be an integration of bimolecular information by new models into records of electronic health applied by both the clients and care providers. Personal records of health provided by the patient will give information on risks predictions; cures selection, adverse events prevention and optimal responses towards treatment. Integrating genomic information with healthcare will need adverse changes for the creation of new perfect informatics infrastructure.
Threats facing the society; Society is faced by two major threats in the field of health which is infectious disease pandemics and bioterrorism. Events that followed the 2001 enhanced the requirement of information infrastructure for the outbreak of disease in relation to communication and detection. This led to the development of National Electronic Disease Surveillance by the CDC for detection of outbreaks. New informatics solutions were funded by the Agency for Health Research and Quality including systems for decision support, syndrome surveillance and response networks for clinician. The Health Resources and Service Administration have made promotions to solutions for informatics education. Naturally occurring outbreaks can be controlled by use of biodefense informatics applications. Healthcare challenges in the society will move from acute to chronic conditions related to health such as cancer, heart diseases and respiratory diseases. More healthcare services will involve community based and ambulance services of chronic conditions related to health.

Guidelines for the Development of Informatics Solutions

Nurses must be engaged in the development of information systems for improvement of quality of care provided in the field of health. Health care should be focused towards the patient by the development of patient health records (PHRs). Nurses have been involved in the formation of applications that are consumer focused including tools that support decisions. There are projects coming up in the industries that are towards the establishment of PHR to monitor the medication and laboratory profiles of the employees. Advances in the anticipated PHR include; clinical encounters capturing, activities for health promotion, personal health parameters monitoring, implementation of decision support, management of risks and advice that is professional, provision of health knowledge directed towards the consumers, Management of benefits related to health and financial resources, and monitoring of exposures in the environment and other in formation of community health (Thede 2012). Various future activities involve nurses such as; PHR framework and templates development, electronic health recording and contents of support system for decisions, Guidelines for system delivery, consumer practice information distribution and development, Education related health informatics, and factors affecting healthcare and access control for information systems. Nursing informatics therefore should constitute of preparedness for emergency, biodefense and nursing for public health. The nursing informatics future will face impaction from genomic revolution. Nurses should remain informed about genomics, proteomics so as to serve effectively as genetic counselors.
Guideposts towards the future of Nursing Informatics; These guideposts are important in; identification of expected informatics solutions, description of education and needs of research for the practice of nursing informatics and administration, the encouragement of nurses collaboration at local, national and international levels.
Nursing guideposts for the development of informatics solutions; Nurses are expected to play a major role in the development of information systems for improvement of quality care. They have an everlasting involvement in the development of applications that are consumers focused. They will assist in PHR development. Advanced PHR anticipation include; clinical encounters capturing, activities of health promotion, individually valued parameters for health monitoring, implementation of professional advice and management of risks, provision of health information that is consumer focused, management of financial resources and health benefits, and monitoring information on community health and exposures tom the environment(McCormick et al 2007)
Nursing guideposts for informative education; many future guideposts include education. Education programs are therefore expected to prepare students studying nursing to engage themselves in multidisciplinary teams. Nurse informatics in the future will have knowledge employing information technologies which are more advanced to come up with for coordination of healthcare delivery for future. There is therefore the need to come up with new systems for information management for nurses to assist in the workflow evaluations. Development of Evidence Based Nursing (EBN) knowledge is important in enhancement of nurses’ skills and knowledge in decision support in the healthcare sectors. Specialists of nurse informatics works in healthcare agencies, education sectors and in industries, with some becoming entrepreneurs.
Nursing informative research support guideposts; Nursing informative profession needs to be equipped with research agenda which is responsive in the current and future priorities of healthcare and formation of science for nursing informatics required for designing technology to improve the effectiveness of delivering healthcare services. Areas that needs nursing informatics research include; Clinical data secondary use, security involving application of biometrics and signatures, avoiding use of identifiers in patient’s data aggregation, development of standards use promotion, health of population, high level of privacy, and NHIN focus. There is also need to focus on obstacles of nursing informatics in relation to quality of healthcare such as; healthcare assessment and improvement, disparities reduction in healthcare minorities, data infrastructure building for quality assessment support and improvement and balancing of interests of clients (Sensmeier, 2010 ).
Collaboration opportunities; there are chances for nursing informatics in playing key roles in tasks started by National Coordinator for Health Information Technology(ONC). They are also expected to develop, view and act to standards formed by the Consolidated Health Informatics (CHI). National Committee for Vital Health Statistics (NCVHS) is involved in the provision of information about the initiatives of government to private sectors and provides advices to Secretary of Health and Human Services and Congress in the field of information on health (NUMA2007).

Transformation of Nursing and Healthcare

This requires the involvement of all nurses to strengthen the field of healthcare and nursing. Health IT assists in the reorganization of nursing for the future. Technology equipment will change how we plan, review or evaluate healthcare services (Cipriano, 2011). All the data concerning the patient for health sector will be digitalized and clinical data readily available to the individual. Through this action there is the expectation of about 3 million nurses prepared towards the change and provision of advance health.

Strengths of the Future of Nursing Informatics

Transformations of nursing informatics through technology will have various benefits to the provision of healthcare services. These include; improvement in the safety of the patient and the efficiency of the healthcare service provided. Nurses’ informatics will be freed from tasks. There will be evidence in the decisions made during the care process. There will be patient empowerment to get involved in the care. Nurse informatics will be in the position of integration of data into health information and coordination of care process within the health sector.

Weakness of the Future of nursing informatics

Some challenges will be faced in the move towards the improvement of the future nursing informatics; there will be the challenge of making human element and technology to balance. It would be not an easy task to bring the balance in maximization of benefits of new technology and the value of human element. There is the challenge of balancing the cost and the benefits. The U.S healthcare system forms a threat to the country finance due to its expensive nature and technology being amongst the leading factors driving costs. Since access to technology depends on ones capability in paying for the technology, there is still the existence of various disparities in the healthcare sectors. There is the challenge of providing training a nursing workforce that is enabled technologically and assurance of ongoing competence. Judy Murphy in her book “The Nursing Informatics Workforce” stated that she used to think that nurses provide the healthcare first and there was need for information on healthcare. Cipriano in his book “The Future of Nursing and Health IT” stated that the expertise in technology will play a critical role in the bridging of gap between nurses and technology. There is also the challenge of assurance of technology use to be ethical.

Conclusion

Consideration in the future of nursing informatics is therefore a good step towards the improvement of the quality of health provided. This will be helpful in the fight against the new diseases that are developing. It would be easy to predict the development of a certain chronic disease. There is also the need to improve on the clients well-being. Therefore restructuring and reconsideration of nurse informatics caused is important for the achievement of the country’s health vision.

Reference

An emerging giant nursing informatics. (2007). Nursing Management, 38(3), 3842. doi:10.1097/01.NUMA.0000262926.85304.a6
Cipriano, F. P. (2011). The Future of Nursing and Health IT: The Quality Elixir. Nursing Economics, (29), 286-282.
McCormick, K.A., DeLaney, C.J., Brennan, P.E., Effken, A.J., Kendrick, K., Murphy, J., Skiba, D.J., Warren, J.J., Weaver, C.A., Weiner, B.,Westra, B.L. (2007).Guidepost to the Future-An Agenda to Nursing Informatics. Journal of American Medical Informatics Association,(14), 19-23.DOI 10.1197/jamia.M1996
Murphy, J. (2010). Nursing informatics: the intersection of nursing, computer, and information sciences. Nursing Economics, 28(3), 204-207.
Murphy, J. (2011). The Nursing Informatics Workforce: Who Are They and What Do They Do? Nursing Economics, 29(3), 150-153.
Sensmeier, E. J, (2010). Nursing Informatics: Designing The healthcare of the future. Nursing
Management, (41), 52-53. Doi 10.1097/01.NUMA.0000390470.98162.ao
Thede, L. (2012). Informatics: Where Is It?. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 17(1), 1.
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