Medical Data Interpretation Quiz

Nursing Informatics

• Integrates nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage and communicate data, information, and knowledge in nursing practices.
• Facilitates the integration of data, information, and knowledge to support patients, nurses, and other providers in their decision-making.
• Applications of information science promote the health of populations, communities, families, and individuals.
• Protections of personal health information as a critical issue in the context of rapidly evolving health information technologies.

Benefits of Nursing Informatics

• Computer systems increase patient care quality, safety, and consistency through quick, easy access to patient's clinical information.
• Enhancing end-to-end treatment and continuity of care by creating protocols to ensure proper communications and interactions between departments, teams, individuals, and patients.
• Patient charting: vital signs, admission and nursing assessments, care plan, and nursing notes can be entered into the system.
• Clinical data integration: clinical information from all disciplines can be viewed and analyzed by nursing staff and then integrated into a patient's care plan.
• Decreased data entry: e.g., allergies and vital signs need only be entered once.
• Better care planning: time spent on care planning is reduced, while the quality of what is recorded is improved.
• Increased time for client care: more time is available for client care because less time is required for documentation of physician orders.
• Better drug administration: electronically prescribed drugs are more legible, thus making it less likely that drugs would be wrongly administered to patients and decreasing potential for error.

Additional Benefits

• Facilitation of data collection for research.
• Creation of a lifetime clinical record.
• Privacy, confidentiality, and security of health information.
• Tele-nursing: remotely provides services such as education, monitoring, and counseling that increase patient satisfaction and influence self-care behavior.
• Research and evidence collection: searching and collecting evidence for best nursing care practices.
• Automated nursing care plans and work lists that remind nurses of planned interventions lead to standardized care and improved outcomes.
• Extensive financial information: can be collected and analyzed for trends.

Skills Required for Nursing Informatics

• Computer skills: contain computerized searches and retrieving patient demographics data, the use of telecommunication devices, the documentation of patient care, and the use of information technologies for improving nursing care.
• Informatics knowledge: recognition of the use or importance of nursing data for improving practice.
• Informatics skills: includes the interpretation of information flow within the organization, the preparation of process information flow charts for all aspects of clinical systems, and the development of standards and database structures to facilitate clinical care, education, administration, or research.

Application of Nursing Informatics

• Clinical practice: computer-generated client documentation, electronic medical record (EMR), and computer-based patient record (CPR).
• Administration: defining the cost of nursing services, evaluating quality assurance and outcomes analysis, and demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of hospitals.
• Education: computerized-assisted instruction, interactive video technology, distance learning-web-based courses, and degree programs.
• Research: data gathering, computer-assisted interactive instructions, and tutorials for learning.

Obstacles/Barriers Facing Practicing Nurses

• Low number of nursing staff.
• Unavailability of computer infrastructure for financial reasons.
• Minimal sets of technology to implement nursing informatics.
• User acceptance.
• Nurses are constrained by lack of IT skills.
• Nurses are not familiar with using a password.
• Unavailability of informatics in service and staff development training programs.
• Nurses are often not a decision-maker when information systems are chosen.
• Insufficient database necessary to answer the work force nursing question.
• Organizational strategic plan.

Test your ability to interpret medical data with scenarios like a 45-year-old male patient post cardiac surgery experiencing hypotension with specific blood pressure and chest tube drainage measurements.