Nursing Informatics and the Foundation of Knowledge - Essay Example

All these are used a hand in hand by healthcare practitioners to ensure patients receive high-quality care. Technology is an important tool for nurses; it can assist in making quick decisions if need be so there is a need for medical practitioners to fully understand how the technology works.  All healthcare workers must be educated on technological developments in their field.  Most information on healthcare is on the internet and means, and ways to retrieve them must be at the nurses’ fingertips.

Most services have been computerized, and knowledge on computers and is its services is inevitable; it is ‘a must-have’. EHR the Electronic Health Record system is in use in almost all parts of the world. The patient’s medical history is stored in electronic systems not manually on sheets of paper. The EHR is of help to psychiatrists and long-term caregivers for tracking a patient’s history. This EHR system has greatly transformed nursing making service delivery effective and efficient due to the availability of patient’s data at any place any time in the shortest time possible. The system has increased accuracy since data entry cannot be repeated or get lost as long as the nurse handling the system is competent.

Report writing and submission to relevant departments entail the use of computers; communication involves the use of emails and chats on the computer system thus all nurses must be technology informatics. For HEDIS review, special software is used to document the results or findings from evaluations made from electronic records on the internet and electronic books and data (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015).

The need to understand telehealth and video conferencing is vital (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015). Most conferences on health are usually held at very far corners of the world, and nurses must attend. For cost reduction, video conferencing has been found to be the better option since the healthcare practitioners can attend and participate in the conference in real-time as if they were at the meeting. This has enabled healthcare practitioners to learn from other health caregivers all over the world at the comfort of their homes or workstations. Telehealth enables one to get nurse attention from their homes on the telephone. A nurse can also get help from other nurses through telephone conversations.

The TIGER initiative was introduced to ensure the healthcare system is patient-centered, user-friendly, less time-consuming, and equitable in nature to inspire nurses to use the new technology at hand (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015). For the TIGER initiative to work well, healthcare practitioners must ensure they learn and be able to use technology. Nursing informatics is in use to improve the quality and effectiveness of healthcare services while reducing costs. Technology is unavoidable and is there to stay, so all medical practitioners including nurses must embrace it.