The article “Implications of the American Nurses Association: Scope and Standards of Practice for Nursing Informatics for Nurse Educators” deals with the essentials of nursing informatics emphasizing the fact that having advanced computer skills is as important for the nurses as pharmacy, anatomy, and physiology skills. The article begins with discussing the notion of computer literacy naming it “a core competency needed in health care [which] should be taught in nursing curricular at all levels” (Nelson & Staggers, 2008, p. 93). The authors define three major skills which fluency with information technology requires.
These are contemporary skills (managing a personal computer and using different software), foundation concepts (being aware of how computers and information systems work), and intellectual capabilities (applying critical thinking to solving problems and testing solutions) (Nelson & Staggers, 2008, p. 93). Then the authors move to the discussion regarding informational literacy and its standards for higher education. They turn the readers’ attention to how convenient recognizing, locating, evaluating, and effectively using the information is for students and how much time and money it saves (Nelson & Staggers, 2008, p. 94).
The authors conclude their article by stating that preparing nurse educators with such a variety of skills is difficult, though not impossible. They stress the importance of this issue for the leaders in education pointing out at the fact that “informatics knowledge and skills rather than position titles or new sub-specialties become the guiding concepts in the future” (Nelson & Staggers, 2008, p. 94).
Initially nursing information used to be defined as “a combination of computer science, information science, and nursing science designed to assist in the management and processing of nursing data, information, and knowledge to support the practice of nursing and delivery of nursing care” (An, n.d., p. 4). With time and due to changing the role of the patient in healthcare decision-making, the definition has slightly changed with nursing informatics turning into “a speciality that integrates nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage and communicate data, information, and knowledge in nursing practice” (An, n.d., p. 4).
Judging from these definition, data, information, and knowledge are nursing informatics’ meta-structures and its core concepts. Data are the observation which can be interpreted both with and without context. Information, in its turn, is the organization and interpretation of data with the purpose of making decisions. Finally, knowledge is the application of information and ideas to solve a problem.
To be competent in the era of information technology one has to easily adopt all the innovations. Since technologies are constantly changing, it is crucial to adapt to these changes, especially for a health care professional. According to An (n.d.), there exist five main levels of adoption of innovation, namely, Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards with the majority of people being at Early Majority and Late Majority levels.
Informatics competency for nurses involves computer literacy and information literacy. Within the former, the nurses are required to have user-level computer skills and basic software tools, while within the latter the nurses are expected to search for, recognize, evaluate, and use information effectively and appropriately.
In the modern era of technological innovations and information technologies informatics competences have become especially important for nursing practitioners. Health care workers are required to have a range of informatics and computer skills in order to be considered competent. Staggers and Delphi have worked out three levels according to which the competency of nurses can be evaluated. These levels are “beginning nurse, experienced nurse, informatics specialist, informatics innovator” (Curran, 2003, p.322). At the first level, the nurses are able to use only basic computer skills and information systems to manage their practice.
Experienced nurses are quite skilled in information management and are able to manage information systems with the help of nurse specialists. The nurses who are information specialists have informatics-related education and, just like informatics innovators, can contribute into the practice of nursing by generating information theory (Curran, 2003, 323).
Currently, I feel like I am on the second level but I am also gradually moving to the third one. I may state without any doubt that I am proficient at the computer and utilization of technology in the healthcare setting. First of all, my computer skills are of a relatively high level because I can easily search necessary data, extract these data from literary source, integrate them into files, properly store, and then use them appropriately.
Moreover, I possess profound informatics knowledge and skills because I am aware of the commonly used data protection methods, I can redesign data for them to be applied more efficiently, analyze the information critically and synthesize evidence, as well as critically evaluate information retrieved from the Internet and transform data into information and knowledge (Curran, 2003). Finally, I can apply all these skills and knowledge to teach patients about different online databases, such as PubMed, ChemIDplus, HSRR, and the like.
Reference List
Curran, C.R. (2003). Informatics Competences for Nurse Practitioners. AACN Clinical Issues, 14(3): 320-330.
Nelson, R. & Staggers, N. (2008). Implications of the American Nurses Association Scope and Standards of Practice for nursing informatics for nurse educators: A discussion. Nursing Outlook, 56(2): 93-94.
An, J. (n.d.). Nursing Informatics within Nursing. New York University.