Nursing Informatics Practicum: Clinical Experience Report
This paper reports on a 100-hour nursing informatics practicum completed at Northwell Health's informatics department. The student describes four learning objectives — understanding the nurse informatician role, distinguishing clinical from non-clinical informatics team members, integrating project management skills, and gaining familiarity with electronic medical record advances. The report details participation in go-live sessions at multiple hospital sites during the transition from McKesson to the Sunrise EHR system, involvement in gap analysis meetings, and collaboration with interdisciplinary healthcare teams. It also examines how the experience aligned with American Nurses Association scope and standards, and identifies two key nursing informatics issues encountered: the need for encrypted testing of health data systems and the problem of excessive, redundant nursing documentation.
- Introduction to Nursing Informatics and Practicum Overview: Defines nursing informatics and introduces the practicum site
- Learning Objectives: Four goals guiding the Northwell practicum experience
- Practicum Experience at Northwell Health: Go-live sessions, gap analysis, and site-level activities
- Meeting ANA Scope and Standards: Issue identification and outcomes identification standards met
- Nursing Informatics Issues: Encrypted Testing and Documentation: Data encryption gaps and redundant nursing documentation problems
- Conclusion: Lessons learned and value of the practicum experience
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What makes this paper effective
- Clearly maps each practicum activity back to a stated learning objective, giving the report a coherent evaluative structure throughout.
- Grounds personal field observations in cited professional standards (ANA Scope and Standards), demonstrating the ability to connect practice to policy.
- Identifies concrete, site-specific informatics issues — encrypted testing and redundant documentation — and supports them with relevant literature, moving beyond simple narration to analytical reflection.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper exemplifies reflective practicum writing: the student integrates first-person field observations with third-party scholarly citations to validate and contextualize what was experienced. This technique — situating personal learning within established professional frameworks — is characteristic of graduate-level health informatics and nursing education portfolios.
Structure breakdown
The report opens with a disciplinary definition and program context, then states four measurable objectives before narrating the field experience chronologically across multiple hospital sites. A separate section evaluates objective attainment against ANA standards (issue identification and outcomes identification). The paper then shifts to two identified practice issues — encrypted testing and excessive documentation — each analyzed with supporting literature. A brief conclusion synthesizes lessons learned and reaffirms the value of the practicum experience.
Introduction to Nursing Informatics and Practicum Overview
The American Nurses Association (2008) defines nursing informatics as the integration of computer science, information science, and nursing practice with the goal of improving healthcare delivery and patient outcomes. Nursing informatics is a career that has developed from the evolution of health informatics, which involves the use of knowledge to examine and translate health data into useful information that can be applied to enhancing patient outcomes through improved processes. As the healthcare field continues to adopt technology rapidly, nursing informatics is one of the educational programs that has emerged to prepare the workforce for the effective use of health information technology in patient care delivery (Dalrymple, 2011).
Nursing informatics education includes formal graduate programs that provide both theoretical and practical training, which includes working alongside an already-practicing preceptor. The ANA Scope and Standards of Nursing Informatics Practice requires students in this profession to complete a formal practicum as part of their practical training. This report discusses my practicum experience at Northwell Health's informatics department, including a comprehensive assessment and evaluation of my field experience, whether I met my stated objectives, and issues encountered during the course of the experience.
Learning Objectives
For this practicum, I had four major objectives I intended to achieve while conducting my various roles at Northwell Health's informatics department. The first objective was to examine and understand the role of a nurse informatician/CIS within a healthcare facility or organization. The second objective was to understand how the role of a nurse informatician differs from the role of a non-clinical informatics team member. This was accomplished by examining the organization's job descriptions and responsibilities and by seeking guidance from the preceptor regarding role responsibility. The third objective entailed identifying measures for integrating project management skills and research into the role of an informatics nurse specialist, based on feedback from the preceptor. The fourth and final objective was to familiarize myself with the latest technological advances in electronic medical records.
My role at Northwell Health's informatics department provided me with an opportunity to engage in different tasks that revolved around these four objectives, and through my experience, I met each of them. These objectives were met in various ways, including participating in meetings with nurse informatics clinical specialists and non-clinical informatics team members. According to the American Nurses Association (2008), nurse informatics clinical specialists provide necessary support to other members of the interdisciplinary healthcare team. Nurse informaticians therefore work with physicians, nurses, patients, and consumers in decision-making processes relating to the use of information processes, structures, and technologies in healthcare delivery. My role at Northwell involved working with registered nurses, staff at the emergency department, and members of the health IT team. Working with these different team members enabled me to explore and understand the differences between nurse informatics clinical specialists and non-clinical informatics team members. According to McLane and Turley (2011), nurse informatics specialists act as supporting staff to interdisciplinary healthcare teams by promoting the effective use of technology in workflow processes toward enhanced patient care delivery.
Secondly, I participated in different go-live sessions during which the department transitioned from paper or other electronic systems to Sunrise. Through these sessions, I was able to understand the role of a nurse informatics specialist and became acquainted with the latest technological advances in electronic health records. The transition to Sunrise was undertaken primarily because it represents one of the latest technological developments in electronic medical records. I explored how this advancement helped to improve patient care delivery processes within the organization. Additionally, participation in the go-live sessions helped me understand the role of nurse informatics clinical specialists in the implementation of health IT systems. This understanding was further shaped by my involvement in gap analysis meetings, where gaps in workflow processes were identified with respect to the use of health IT systems. Through gap analysis, I gained a clear picture of the nurse informatics clinical specialist's role within the organization, particularly when handling the implementation of a computer system for managing health data.
Practicum Experience at Northwell Health
My practicum experience was carried out at Northwell Health's informatics department and lasted a combined total of 100 hours. The computer system utilized in this department is Sunrise, which supports the management of electronic health data and information throughout the facility. During my time at the hospital, I was present at different go-live sessions at Syosset and Huntington Hospital. My activities at the Huntington Hospital go-live included participating in innovation meetings, learning about innovative applications that could be used to enhance the management of electronic health data, assisting staff with system use, engaging in ongoing evaluation and documentation of workflow gaps from McKesson to Sunrise, and reviewing the informatics schedule. My experience also involved rounding on units with informatics specialists and participating with informatics teams at the Command Center.
At the Staten Island go-live session, I evaluated the review of workflow during the transition from McKesson to Sunrise. This experience helped me identify and understand gaps in workflow processes during the transition. I also observed and reviewed workflow processes at Syosset with regard to the effectiveness of the systems in promoting enhanced workflow. The observations at Syosset were conducted in the emergency department, which had previously relied on paper documentation before the Sunrise computer system was adopted. The review process therefore focused on determining how the system improved operations and patient care delivery in that setting.
Generally, the practicum experience was a humbling one for me as I entered a health informatics department as a novice nurse informatician. It was a crucial element of my academic journey, providing field experience in the clinical responsibilities and duties of nurse informaticians. The transition from a health informatics student to a practicing informatician is a difficult one that requires time to develop practical competence. This practicum provided me with field experience that will help make that transition more manageable. Based on the lessons I learned, nurse informaticians need to be competent both in the classroom and in the clinical setting in order to make meaningful contributions toward enhancing patient care delivery. With the guidance of my preceptor, I was able to gain meaningful experience in the nurse informatics clinical setting.
Conclusion
This practicum experience has been an important aspect of my educational journey as a nursing informatics student. It provided me with an opportunity to develop practical experience relating to the role and responsibilities of a nurse informatics clinical specialist within an organization. Through this process, I met my specific goals and objectives related to nursing informatics practice, guided by my preceptor and by the established standards of the American Nurses Association. The practical experience obtained from this clinical field placement served as hands-on training through which I enhanced my competencies in this field. Based on the lessons learned from this practicum, the implementation of an electronic health record requires establishing suitable processes that focus on improving patient outcomes and enhancing patient care delivery.
References
American Nurses Association (ANA). (2008). Nursing informatics: Scope & standards of practice. Washington, D.C.: Nursesbooks.org.
Dalrymple, P. W. (2011). Data, information, knowledge: The emerging field of health informatics. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 37(5), 41–44. doi:10.1002/bult.2011
Gugerty, B., et al. (2007). Challenges and opportunities in documentation of the nursing care of patients. Retrieved from Nursing Workforce Commission of Maryland website:
McLane, S., & Turley, J. P. (2011). Informaticians: How they may benefit your healthcare organization. The Journal of Nursing Administration, 41(1), 29–35. doi:10.1097/NNA.0b013e3181fc19d6
Murphy, J. (2010). Nursing informatics: The intersection of nursing, computer and information sciences. Nursing Economics, 28(3), 204–207.
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