Informatics Competencies

Question

Informatics is one of the most diverse disciplines in health care. Many nurses have been able to capitalize on their informatics knowledge and interests to carve out new roles within their own health care setting. As you embark on your own informatics career path, it is important to be aware of the vast possibilities that await you. One of the best sources to begin your investigation is the American Nurses Association (ANA). The ANA recognizes that nursing informatics titles have little standardization across health care settings. As such, they have categorized the roles of informaticist into thirteen functional categories:

Essay Instructions:

1. Review nursing informatics competencies such as those outlined by the American Nurses Association (ANA), the Technology Informatics Guiding Education Reform (TIGER), and the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN).
2. Post a brief description of the informatics functional area in which you are interested. Then, identify at least four ANA, TIGER and/or QSEN competencies that you believe to be vital for success in this functional area, and justify your choices. Explain how you might successfully develop and master each of these competencies.

Answer

Informatics Competencies

Nursing is a profession that requires nurses to offer safe, proficient, and kind-hearted care in a progressively technical and digital setup. In their pursuit of providing efficient services, the nursing professionals integrated nursing with computer and information science with the aim of managing data, knowledge, and information in the nursing profession. Nursing Informatics is therefore aimed at facilitating nurses, patients, and other service providers with enough data, knowledge, and information required for decision making (Staggers & Thompson, 2002). This introduction and usage of technologies to aid nurses in attending to their patients led to changes and inventions that in turn contributed to specialized nursing care, health care, and treatment. On the other hand, these specializations require unique competencies since each requires different sets of information, data, and knowledge.

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An informatics Nurse, therefore, requires the following competencies to work in a healthcare facility: IT design knowledge, implementation and selection skills for creating an Electronic Medical Record (EMR). From American Nurses Association (2008) Informatics Nursing has the following competency areas: Administration, management and leadership, consultation, integrity and compliance management, education and professional advancement, coordination, integration and facilitation, development, research and evaluation, and policy formulation and advocacy (American Nurses Association, 2008). TIGER, on the other hand, proposes the following competencies: information literacy, basic computer skills and information management competencies.  For TIGER these skills are vital as they equip the nurses with skills to analyze, design and document information (TIGER, 2006). QSEN competencies equip nurses with skills required to tackle challenges they face at their work. The aim is to improve the quality of services offered. QSEN identifies six competencies which includeteamwork and collaboration, patient-centred care, safety, quality improvement,evidence-based practice andinformatics,(Armstrong, 2010).

All the competencies above are all vital for the better provision of quality services to patients. However, the most preferred skills include information management competencies, consultation competencies, research and evaluation, and patient-centered care. Nurses usually handle lots of information about patients since they are always with patients (Preheim, Armstrong, & Barton, 2009). Nurses perform several functions: they educate patients, act as patient’s advocates and caregivers as such are required to be innovative and critical in their decision making. To be able to handle the enormous information they have they need information management skills. To be able to make right decisions and advice their patients well they need to do a lot of research hence need research and evaluation skills. At the same time since nurses are caregivers, they need consultation and patient-centered care competencies such skills will enable them to give quality services to their patients.

References

American Nurses Association. (2008). Nursing Informatics: Scope & Standards of Practice. New York: Silver Spring.

Armstrong, G. (2010). Quality and Safety Education for Nurses. Nursing Outlook, 2-11.

Preheim, G., Armstrong, G., & Barton, A. (2009). The New Fundamentals in Nursing: Introducing Beginning Quality and Safety Education for Nurses’ Competencies. Journal of Nursing Education, 48(12), 694-697.

Staggers, N., & Thompson, C. B. (2002). The Evolution of Definitions for Nursing Informatics: A Critical Analysis and Revised Definition. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 9(3), 255-261.

TIGER. (2006). Informatics Competencies for Every Practicing Nurse: Recommendations from the TIGER Collaborative. The TIGER Initiative, 1-33.