Knowledge Generation through Informatics

Posted by Winnie Melda on November 19th, 2018

Question: What are informatics-related possibilities to accelerate the generation and uptake of new nursing knowledge?

            In the wake of dynamic changes in the health care sector, the delivery of care continues to become more complex that demands more knowledge from the nurses. There are emergent health care problems, increased technological changes, and demands to use EBP in improving care and patient outcomes, as well as expanding roles of care providers. The issues are complex to address thereby shifting the proficiency with technology and informatics skills from the recommended model to an imperative model. Literature reveals that technology helps to enhance care for the patients and also provide fast access to information and knowledge. The technologies and tools in use in electronic health records and patient-care technologies are among the informatics-related possibilities to accelerate the generation and uptake of new nursing knowledge. The essay has a discussion of the EHRs and patient-care Technologies that assist in accelerating the generation and adoption of new nursing knowledge.

            The use of electronic health records helps to collect, store, and retrieval of clinical information in a better way than the manual records. The information generated via the EHRs is legible and allows customization by the user. It is also possible to have additional support by use of the EHRs by use of clinical alerts, decision support, and incorporation of the evidence-based guidelines for care in the resources available for use. The user can link to different websites and databases thereby able to view and assimilate patient information online in the system. The data collected for meaningful use supports the legal, accreditation, and reimbursement demands of the disease and procedure code information (Cimino, Jing & Del Fiol, 2012).

            The large pools of secondary data are useful in improving care, identifying patterns, reducing costs, supporting research, and responding to consumer preferences. The information obtained from the gathered data supports timely and informed decision making and also reduces risks (Mantalvo, 2013). In practice, secondary data should be of good quality to support the informed decision-making.

            The other possibility to accelerate the generation and uptake of new nursing knowledge is the use of patient-care information technology. The technologies save on labor and provide information that supports care and documentation. The different tools used for patient care include the digital monitors, positive patient identifiers, trackers, RFID medication administrators, smart technologies, mobile health care, and Telehealth applications among others. The technologies change the nature of the nurses’ work and extend the capabilities to patient care as well as improving the access to information and knowledge. The advanced technologies used in patient care provide reliable information to the care providers that enable them to make decisions about appropriate patient care (Mantalvo, 2013). They have increased access to structured patient information, hence easy to develop new nursing knowledge useful in their practice. It is likely that care providers are more willing to work closely with the patients when they have access to accurate information. The health care professions absorb the raw data and use it for evidenced based research thereby generating new nursing knowledge. 

Conclusion

            The need to apply patient data in making an accurate diagnosis is crucial but requires the support of technological systems and tools to facilitate the process. EHRs and other patient care technological tools are important sources of advanced nursing information whose incorporation into care delivery generates reliable knowledge for nursing practice. The use of informatics-related possibilities ensures that the collected nursing data is put to use for generating and uptake of new nursing knowledge.

References

Cimino, J., Jing, X., & Del Fiol, G. (2012). Meeting the electronic health record “Meaningful        Use” criterion for the HL7 Infobutton standard using opening button and the Librarian          Info button Tailoring Environment (LITE): AMIA 2012 Annual Symposium         Proceedings.12–20; Retrieved from proceedings.amia.org

Montalvo, I. (2013). How smart are your data? Nursing Management, 44(6), 23–24, doi:             10.1097/01.NUMA.0000430412.80830.e6

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in research paper writing help 24 hours if you need a similar paper you can place your order for essay writing services.