Nursing education importance of information technology skills

How information and technology connect to patient care outcomes and a safe care environment
Explain why information and technology skills are essential for safe patient care.
Within the context of healthcare, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) represents a collection of services or ventures which facilitate remote patient care (telehealth), transfer of knowledge, and interdisciplinary clinical assistance. ICT usage can promote inexpensive client-focused care, improve knowledge sharing and care quality, decrease time of travel, ensure patients as well as healthcare workers are better informed, and foster a novel kind of provider-patient relationship (Alligood, 2014; Rouleau et al., 2015).
The Workforce Commission of the AAN (American Academy of Nursing) acknowledged the significance of efficient technology when it comes to enhancing care efficacy and safety, besides helping save time for nurses to conduct essential care activities. The RWJF (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)-sponsored TD2 (Technology Drill Down) initiative of the Commission dealt with the imminent nursing dearth for decreasing nursing care’s demand (Cassano, 2014). Endeavoring to discover technological resolutions to inefficacies in workflow on medico-surgical nurse units, the TD2 venture unites multidisciplinary teams for reviewing the nursing workflow’s present state, planning a desirable state for the future, and brainstorming technological solutions for filling gaps— with an overall, holistic aim of offering more effective, safer patient care.
A decision support system may be established for aiding healthcare practitioners in solving issues requiring specific decisions cropping up for the past three decades. The system serves to replace human knowledge’s role through formulating knowledge within itself (Darvish et al., 2014). An expert system forms the most widely-employed kind of support system for clinical decision-making, having applications within show notes, critical therapeutic strategies, diagnostic support, decision support, recovery, prescriptions, and identifying and interpreting pictures. But they may not be used as separate instruments replacing human expertise. Thus, knowledge management and such systems ought to be integrated. 
Identify the baccalaureate nurse's role in championing the use of information and technology to improve safety and patient outcomes.
Within the contemporary age, ICT’s potential for application has been growing; such technologies are now capable of enhancing nursing outcome quality (Rouleau et al., 2015). Nursing practitioners are the healthcare provider group whose role requires maximum interaction with patients; furthermore, they also interact more often with technology. The adoption of technology ought to result in positive nurse attitudes, thereby increasing their productivity. Nurses must participate in initial systems design for improving patient care quality and altering their practice culture to facilitate this.
Nursing’s technological and technical mediation on the medicine-nursing border makes tele-nurses medical goddesses. The application of novel technology has enhanced their decision-making authority (Darvish et al., 2014). For effective EHR (electronic health record) system implementation, nursing practitioners have to be familiar with information technology, informatics skills/knowledge, and computer skills. Within the domain of tele-nursing, the significance of information quality conditions, confidentiality, accountability, integrity, transparency, authenticity, productivity, information updating, standards and health website accessibility ought to be taken into consideration.
Other nurse practice potential-related elements within this decade include providing remote services via tele-nursing or telemedicine. To this end, simple remote diagnostic hardware and software are developed for facilitating e-healthcare services. Tele-nursing workers may offer a number of services including education, counseling and patient monitoring using the World Wide Web (Rouleau et al., 2015). Tele-nursing professionals are contented with their roles and their ability to care remotely for patients with the aid of special knowledge and capabilities. Their services can help meet the dearth in and demand for nursing staff across the globe.
Provide examples of how nurses use technology to make health care-related decisions.
Electronic charting facilities quick and efficient data access on the part of nursing professionals. Moreover, they can utilize information for improving nursing workflow quality. In a majority of instances, nurse informatics experts contribute greatly to aiding nurses with the identification and management of such challenges. Several proposed nursing theories serve to promote the effectiveness of nursing practice (Darvish et al., 2014). The most homogenous nursing theory for informatics nurses is change theory. Nurse informatics experts employ theories when directing healthcare, guiding and technically facilitating workflow of staff nurses, and offering leadership for systemic reform.
Nursing informatics support for continuous professional growth, which applies nurses’ work knowledge, improves patient satisfaction and care quality. Researchers have addressed the significance of nurse participation in meetings of informatics committees, wherein they may engage in designing systems, bettering interdisciplinary communication, and redesigning workflow (Bowman, 2013). A large number of nursing practitioners are ethically and professionally driven to provide their personal contribution to innovation, new knowledge, and quality improvement via evidence-based decisions.
A majority of nursing practitioners currently hold positive views when it comes to improved electronic documentation quality, besides a novel appreciation of reduced workload thanks to an efficient system. But in spite of electronic documentation’s advantages for nursing care workflow, obstacles exist which may hamper computerized documentation system implementation. A few of these obstacles may arise due to behavioral problems relating to satisfaction with and perceptions of information technology, besides time devoted to documenting client data (Bowman, 2013). Challenges crop up when older nurses, typically, experience apprehension when it comes to working within a technology-filled environment. Despite being presented with useful cheat sheets, reference guides, and screenshots, a few nurses continue to struggle with adjusting to e-charts. A few fear clicking wrong whilst working with digital charts, and display annoyance when unable to carry out these everyday electronic activities.
Analyze the relationship between quality and integrity of data entered into a database and the resulting effect on the quality of patient care.
Health IT implementation, including that of EHRs, proves vital to transforming the nation’s existing healthcare system and making it safer, more effective, and capable of consistently delivering superior-quality healthcare. In spite of EHRs’ potential to enhance patient safety and care quality, an increasing pool of scientific evidence points to the probable safety hazards linked to this “e-iatrogenesis” (Gelzer et al., 2012). EHR-connected mistakes include loss of information or inaccurate data entry, displaying or transmission, causing information integrity loss. While not much published evidence exists to quantify the scale of HIT-linked risks, the possibility of HIT-generated clinical errors, injury or even death has grown considerably with HIT products becoming more closely involved in healthcare delivery.
Vendors of EHR systems frequently incorporate functionalities which facilitate documentation (e.g., copy-pasting, templates, auto object insertion (like bringing clinical values in from some other EHR area), and the application of standard paragraphs/phrases). Some of the advantages of such features are improved information capture efficacy, legibility, document reliability and completeness, and promptness. But if not utilized properly, and in the absence of adequate controls and knowledge, such features may result in incorrect documentation, possibly ending up in charges of fraud or clinical errors. Mistakes linked to templates and copy-pasting functionality form a couple of widely occurring EHR risks linked to improper documentation capture. 
The widespread application of copying-pasting (or cloning, carrying forward, and copying forward, as it is sometimes referred to) (Bowman, 2013) text from diverse health record locations, from one encounter only or from earlier encounters, represents a major EHR-related issue, which is aggravating with expansion of EHR use. Some of the risks to integrity of documentation due to incorrect copy/paste utilization are:
· Imprecise or out-of-date information;
· Propagating false facts;
· Redundant data that hinders identification of current information;
· Failure to cite documentation purpose or author;
· Failure to identify date of creation of documentation;
· Needlessly long progress notes and
· Internally conflicting progress notes (Bowman, 2013).
Eventually, the health record’s integrity and credibility are damaged, with real possibility of patient harm. 























References
Alligood, M. R. (Ed.). (2014). Nursing theorists & their work (8thed.). St. Louis, MO: Mosby.
Bowman S. (2013). Impact of electronic health record systems on information integrity: quality and safety implications. Perspectives in health information management, 10(Fall), 1c.
Cassano, C. (2014). The right balance-technology and patient care. On-Line Journal of Nursing Informatics, 18(3).
Darvish, A., Bahramnezhad, F., Keyhanian, S., &Navidhamidi, M. (2014). The role of nursing informatics on promoting quality of health care and the need for appropriate education. Global journal of health science, 6(6), 11-8. doi:10.5539/gjhs.v6n6p11
Gelzer, R., Hall, T., Liette, E., Warner, D., & Wiedemann, L. A. (2012). Copy Functionality Toolkit: A Practical Guide: Information Management and Governance of Copy Functions in Electronic Health Record Systems. Chicago, IL: AHIMA.
Rouleau, G., Gagnon, M. P., &Côté, J. (2015). Impacts of information and communication technologies on nursing care: an overview of systematic reviews (protocol). Systematic reviews, 4, 75. doi:10.1186/s13643-015-0062-y