5 minute read
Informatics Is for Every Nurse
BY JULIA QUINN-SZCESUIL
If nurses know anything about innovation and technology in the nursing industry, they know this: it changes in a second.
Of all the nursing specialties, nursing informatics, which combines the knowledge and practices of nursing and technology, is one of the most cutting-edge areas. Most nurses work with something related to informatics or technology, and that’s why nurses in the specialty are needed.
Nurses who use the systems and technologies with patients are best positioned to help innovate, design, and recommend improvements for everything from tools using artificial intelligence to medication scanning. Their history of using technology in a realworld clinical setting offers a perspective that others don’t have. As advances progress rapidly, they will be the ones using it with patients in real-time.
Nursing’s Technology Future
“Nurses will tell you they are given a piece of technology, and they try to use it, and they say, ‘Who designed this?’ Someone has to get into a nurse’s head and understand how a nurse thinks,” says Patricia Sengstack, DNP, RN-BC, FAAN, FACMI, senior associate dean for informatics and a professor biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing, and a nursing informatics consultant with Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “Informatics does that, and then it gets all the data out to make predictions and improve-
ments in care.”
Whether nurses feel fluent with technology and informatics, they are adept at the systems they use in their work processes, which is essential.
“In today’s world, if you go into a hospital, an ambulatory setting, or a long-term care facility, there are few aspects of care delivery that don’t have some aspect of technology,” says Sengstack. Nurses work with technology constantly, from electronic health records to pulse oximeters. They probably are, even if they don’t consider themselves especially tech literate. “If you have to plug it in or it needs a battery, that’s technology,” she says.
Training Makes a Difference
Nurses frequently learn equipment as they are working with it, so they have a different perspective of its efficacy, says Gregory Alexander, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, FACMI, and a professor of nursing at the Columbia University School of Nursing. It can be frustrating for nurses to learn on the fly, but that can be helped if nurse informatics experts work to close the knowledge gap. For example, they can introduce AI in simulations or electronic health records training in academic or work settings, so nurses are prepared to use any technology to its full advantage.
He says that nearly threefourths of healthcare executives trust artificial intelligence tools. Still, in his research, Alexander says nurses who
says, is the telehealth work that increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic—connecting with patients remotely reduced the opportunities for the virus to spread while also allowing patients to receive the care they needed. Virtual appointments and tools also greatly expanded access to and
work with the clinical systems are more wary of AI.
Informatics and technology bring advances at the patient bedside and also in administration. For example, nursing executives’ advances in informatics are a boon. “Healthcare executives can use the data to make different decisions about their institutions,” says Alexander.
But if nurses learn to approach new tech tools, how they approach their work tasks helps reframe it all. “In nursing, we assess, diagnose, plan, implement, and evaluate,” says Sengstack. “That’s the nursing process.” Informatics, she says, follows the same pattern. “One of my teachers in grad school said that any electronic system can be managed using the nursing process: you analyze, plan, implement, and evaluate.”
“The beauty of this field is that it’s always evolving,” says Sengstack, noting that’s one of the reasons she is so happy with her career choice in informatics. “It’s not the same, and there are always new advancements.” The most evident recent example, she continuation of necessary athome and mental healthcare.”
Improving Equity with Informatics
As organizations begin to use informatics to assess patients, Alexander says equity will be improved because technology often improves the accuracy of a diagnosis. But until that happens, disparities will continue.
In addition, organizations will need to catch up as systems become more sophisticated and widely used. “You have to think about the settings,” says Alexander. “Most nursing homes staff are not ready for that kind of technology, and there’s not the infrastructure in that setting to support it.”
In the future, Sengstack sees technology becoming more complex.
As artificial intelligence evolves with, for example, more exact language processing and voice recognition, she envisions virtual nurses delivering data-gathering and data-entering tasks or eventually capturing audio and visual interactions to translate into
medical records and document it in the patient’s chart.
Alexander agrees, noting that educating and training nurses on any new technology, technical process, or equipment is essential. “Otherwise, you’re just winging it,” he says, and it will impact a nurse’s workflow and patient care. Using equipment in real-time is also vastly different from using it with a patient, so technology must enhance that patient-centered relationship, not degrade it, says Alexander.
Nurses who can fill these roles are not super techy coders and programmers, says Sengstack; they can even be nurses who use equipment, understand its value, and have ideas on how it can be
improved. So even if a nurse has no plans to change careers, the nurse’s expertise in specific systems is invaluable.
Nurses interested in the career should begin by shadowing an informatics nurse to see what they do and how that would match particular interests. If there’s an informatics department in the hospital where you work, that’s a great way to get your foot in the door, says Sengstack. As you’re already with the organization and the systems and technology being used, your transition will be smoother than starting with all unknowns.
“It’s all exciting, but it won’t happen overnight,” says Sengstack. “We need nurse informaticists because we don’t have enough nurses at the design, planning, and implementation table. With nurse informaticists, the technology is much more effective and successful at meeting the desired needs.”
Julia Quinn-Szcesuil is a freelance writer based in Bolton, Massachusetts.
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