NURS 6050 Information science Essay
NURS 6050 Information science Essay
NURS 6050 Information science Essay
Peter Drucker, a management consultant and author, coined the term “knowledge worker” in his book The Landmarks of Tomorrow (1959). Knowledge workers, according to Drucker, are high-level workers who apply theoretical and analytical knowledge gained through formal training to develop products and services. Is this something you’ve heard before?
Nurses are highly educated professionals. What has changed since Drucker’s time are the methods for acquiring knowledge. The amount of data that can now be generated, as well as the tools used to access it, have evolved significantly in recent years, allowing healthcare professionals (among many others) to take on the role of knowledge worker in new and powerful ways.
Information science is mainly focused on input, processing, output, and feedback of data and information through the integration of information technology with the need to understand stakeholders’ perspectives engaged in the process and using IT are required (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017). The essence of this discussion is to describe a scenario where data can be used to solve problems in healthcare.
Scenario
Access to medical records is essential for healthcare professionals in ascertaining that patients get the best care (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017). A scenario of focus is immunizations in facilities where nurse practitioners work with different stakeholders like schools, parents and providers. These practitioners help organizations keep immunization records. The challenging part with the job occurs when families move across states without their immunization data and are not certain of a child having been immunized or not. Parents may have to connect with their past physicians or clinics, previous state’s immunization registry or the previous school. However, these struggles can be mitigated through the establishment of data sharing using a central hub or database for all information on vaccinations in the country or across states and organizations.
Presently, information on vaccine is collected using an online database called Immunization Information System (IIS) which tracks vaccines administered to patients. The database also offers information on the next vaccine (CDC, 2019). Using this hub, one can collect all data and create a central hub comprising of vaccine information from each entity. The existence of the central vaccine hub would enable providers to access records for their new patients and offer the necessary immunizations without any fear. Through the database, the professionals can monitor their patient’s vaccination history and make effective decisions and judgment concerning the types of vaccines that they can have or not.
The central hub or database can offer a host of knowledge and ideas to providers. For example, healthcare professionals can see the
coverage levels in different parts or areas and assess the potential of any disease outbreaks (Nagle et al., 2017). The professionals can also see how effective the communities have attained a herd immunity that works to stop or reduce the spread. For instance, millions of people are now vaccinated against the Coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19); either for the first dose or both. The implication is that providers are using information from a central database or hub to evaluate the vaccination status of different people and assess the percentage of those immunized against COVID-19. Community immunity or herd immunity occurs when a significant number of people in a targeted population get vaccinated against a certain disease. Through this approach, it becomes difficult for a disease to spread to unvaccinated individuals.
Nurse leaders can use clinical reasoning and judgment from this knowledge since patients would not miss the expected vaccine doses and also ensure that those who have received do not have extra and unnecessary doses. Through this knowledge, nurse leaders will have the ability to identify contraindications and notices concerning certain vaccines into patients’ systems (Nagle et al., 2017). The providers would also be aware of the locational changes of patients and the need to integrate their vaccination history for effective monitoring and tracking of conditions.
Conclusion
Informatics remains a critical part of effective care delivery and nurse leaders should integrate data to make informed and effective decisions, especially in connection to vaccinations. Having a central hub is essential in developing a sharing and information exchange platform for providers and patients to enhance vaccination success across states, especially at this time. The scenario demonstrates the need for healthcare providers to work collaboratively to develop acceptable models to share health information.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2019). About Immunization Information
Systems. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs/iis/about.html
McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2017). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge,
(4th ed.) Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Nagle, L., Sermeus, W., & Junger, A. (2017). Evolving role of the nursing informatics specialist.
In J. Murphy, W. Goossen, & P. Weber (Eds.), Forecasting Competencies for Nurses in the Future of Connected Health, 212–221. Clifton, VA: IMIA and IOS Press
This presentation will discuss the concept of a knowledge worker. It explains nursing informatics and discusses the role of a nurse leader as a knowledge worker. In addition, I will present the hypothetical scenario that might benefit from the collection and application of data. I will explore the data that can be used, how it might be collected, and the knowledge derived from the data.
A knowledge worker plays a key role in the organization in generating knowledge. They obtain, maneuver, interpret and apply information to carry out multidisciplinary, complex organizational work (Field & Chan, 2018). Besides, knowledge workers analyze data and use their expertise to address problems, generate ideas, and develop new products and services.
Knowledge work is often complex, and knowledge workers need certain skills, abilities, and acquaintance with factual and theoretical knowledge (Field & Chan, 2018). Therefore, knowledge workers must obtain, access, recall, and apply data, interact well with others, and have the ability and motivation to obtain and enhance these skills.
Knowledge workers’ roles include making decisions whereby they work with ideas. Their duties focus on intellectual rather than physical power and are characterized by non-repetitive tasks (Field & Chan, 2018). In addition, they use various methods and techniques to address problems and are authorized to decide what work methods to employ to complete their job tasks. Knowledge workers include: scientists, professionals, educators, and information system designers.
Nursing informatics is a specialty that incorporates nursing science with analytical sciences and information management. It seeks to discover, define, manage, and convey data, information, and knowledge in nursing practice (Moore et al., 2020). Nursing informatics supports nurses, the interprofessional health care team, healthcare consumers, patients, and stakeholders in decision-making in various roles and settings to attain desired outcomes. It supports this through information structures, processes, and technology (Moore et al., 2020).
Nursing informatics skills are applied to:
Create data structures and software tools to support nursing practice (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017).
Keep EHR in line with best practices for data management, processing, and organization.
Apply analytics in evaluating and facilitating nursing processes (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017).
Facilitate communication among healthcare and IT professionals.
Train providers on the best use of EHRs and CDSS (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017).
Nurse leaders are knowledge workers. Nurse leader competencies at the organization or system level are connected to knowledge management. Nurse leaders’ roles as knowledge workers include: Facilitating organizational learning by supporting nurses as they find, share, and develop knowledge to advance nursing practice. Developing and improving knowledge worker skills aligned to obtaining and analyzing data and examining clinical trends and patterns (Carroll, 2019).
They develop innovative approaches to improve access to health care, improve the quality of care, and reduce healthcare costs.
Nurse leaders focus on utilizing technology and developing electronic systems that will enhance data collection and analysis (Carroll, 2019).
Nurse leaders analyze data to establish information that is valuable in enhancing the delivery of patient care and improving the quality of care and health outcomes (Carroll, 2019).
Patient falls among geriatrics is a hypothetical scenario that would benefit from collecting and applying data in our healthcare organization. They result in severe injuries on patients, such as head trauma and fractures, which prolong hospital stay and increase healthcare costs (Venema et al., 2019). Data that could be used in relation to patient falls include the number of patient falls and common conditions of patients who suffer falls (Lucero et al., 2019). In addition, data on the length of hospitalization from falls and patient costs incurred from falls can be used to address the issue of falls.
Patient falls data can be collected from patients’ records and a hospital’s incidence reporting system (Lucero et al., 2019). The data can provide knowledge on patients’ at the highest risk of falls and the factors that put patients at risk of falls in the inpatient units. Data on the diseases with the highest falls can offer insight into the patients’ conditions that health providers should take additional measures to prevent falls (Lucero et al., 2019). Furthermore, the data can enlighten nurses on the gaps in patient care that contribute to patient falls and the measures they should implement to address the issue (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017).
References
Carroll, W. M. (2019). The synthesis of nursing knowledge and predictive analytics. Nursing management, 50(3), 15-17. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NUMA.0000553503.78274.f7
Field, J. C., & Chan, X. W. (2018). Contemporary knowledge workers and the boundaryless work–life interface: Implications for the human resource management of the knowledge workforce. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 2414. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02414
Lucero, R. J., Lindberg, D. S., Fehlberg, E. A., Bjarnadottir, R. I., Li, Y., Cimiotti, J. P., … & Prosperi, M. (2019). A data-driven and practice-based approach to identify risk factors associated with hospital-acquired falls: Applying manual and semi-and fully-automated methods. International journal of medical informatics, 122, 63-69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2018.11.006
McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2017). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Moore, E. C., Tolley, C. L., Bates, D. W., & Slight, S. P. (2020). A systematic review of the impact of health information technology on nurses’ time. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 27(5), 798-807. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocz231
Venema, D. M., Skinner, A. M., Nailon, R., Conley, D., High, R., & Jones, K. J. (2019). Patient and system factors associated with unassisted and injurious falls in hospitals: an observational study. BMC geriatrics, 19(1), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-019-1368-8