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Nursing
Informatics Explained
According to
American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), the scientific
practice of Nursing Informatics is designed to integrate nursing,
including its information and knowledge, with the good management of
information and communication technologies. AMIA, which was formed
in 1998, says that this is to promote the health in families and
communities, as well as individual people on a worldwide basis. This
definition was put forward by the IMIA Special Interest Group on
Nursing Informatics in 2009). The application of nursing informatics
knowledge something that is not only empowering healthcare
practitioners around the globe, but something that patients should
take an interested in since it helps to achieve a more
patient-centred healthcare system.
In the UK, most – although by no means all - nursing practice is
conducted under the auspices of the National Health Service (NHS).
The National Nursing Informatics Strategic Taskforce is the leading
NHS body in the field. According to the NHS, information sharing is
an important issue not only for nurses, but for midwives and other
types of health visitors, too. All types of healthcare professionals
use information on a daily basis in order to deliver care and to
improve key services. Information, they say, is also put to use to
develop and deliver educational programmes in the field of
healthcare and also to undertake research projects. The task force,
it should be noted, are keen to stress that it is nurses who are at
the centre of this information, both in terms collecting data and of
sharing it. According to the NHS’s group, the quick growing field of
nursing informatics brings into sharp focus the primary role that
nurses play in the delivery of healthcare in times which are much
more technologically based than ever before.
Whilst the National Nursing Informatics Strategic Taskforce is made
up of a sample of healthcare professional with much expertise as
well as opinion leaders in the area, their focus is on all nurses,
midwives and health visitors. The task force attempts to encourage
all healthcare deliverers to become engaged with the use of
information in all areas of their work. Not only this, but the group
is looking to develop nursing informatics leaders from talented
practitioners and by mentoring them in the field. There is also a
specific NHS group that deal with nursing informatics for healthcare
professionals in the field of mental health.
On both sides of the Atlantic, as well as elsewhere around the
world, nursing informatics is designed to provide core purposes
which will ultimately lead to improved patient care. These include
the advancement of the science of informatics as well as promotion
of education surrounding informatics amongst nurses. On top of this,
most informatics organisations also promote health information
technology and seek to ensure that is used in the most effective
ways possible that improves patient health and healthcare. Another
area of promotion is that of informatics as an important profession
in its own right and the advancement of professionals working in the
field. For many informatics bodies, all of this work is done by
providing services for their members which enable networking
opportunities as well as means of developing professionally. As well
as numerous domestic nursing informatics events that have been held
around the globe, there have now been no less than eleven
international congresses that have dealt with the science, the last
being held in Montreal, Canada during June, 2012.
Nursing informatics necessarily deals with the use of technology,
nowadays. In nursing, as with a number of other professions,
information technology is now rife, but in healthcare is
particularly specialised. Technology in nursing, it should be said,
is nothing new. Indeed, nurses have for decades become proficient in
adapting to working practices that require the use of technology –
much of it highly complex or, in some cases experimental. In fact,
you could go back as the far as the time of Florence Nightingale to
see how this adaptation to technology has been a constant in the
profession. Nightingale was not simply a pioneering nurse who
developed the ward system that we recognise today, but as far back
as 1857 was compiling and processing various data in an effort to
make a scientific case for appropriate nursing and medical
protocols.
In the history of technology of health care, various forms of
equipment and contraptions have been used. Devices such as
ventilators and physiological monitors, to give two examples, were
first used to provide intensive and critical care. Through the
dissemination of information from one healthcare professional to
another, so both devices became common place. Indeed, they are now
currently used in less acute areas of care and even in the home,
albeit in adapted forms.
By the latter half of 1970s the prestigious scholarly nursing
periodical, the Journal of Nursing Administration, started to
feature a regular column that was related to the field of nursing
informatics. However, the term ‘nursing informatics’ did not fall
into common usage until it was coined in 1980. Since then, with the
development of the personal computer in the workplace and the later
advent of the internet, the term has gained more and more pace
within the profession and is now used regularly all over the world.
These days nursing is evolving most rapidly by advances in the field
information and communication technology, or ICT. As such, ICT has
become an essential area for study amongst many professional and
particularly so for an information-based vocation, like nursing.
Nursing informatics can be applied ICT by a model that focuses on
how people process data and information. In the new so-called
Information Age, where some claim there is a doubling of knowledge
every five years or so, there is a greater degree specialisation
than ever before. This is as true within the field of nursing as
elsewhere, so for nursing informaticians, it is imperative that all
healthcare professional have ready access to the latest scientific
information which will help the to deliver the highest quality care.
In the future, as the diversity of specialities is expected to
continue, nursing informatics will become more important than ever
before.
