Interaction between Nurse Informaticists and Other Healthcare Professionals
In my healthcare organization where I work, nurse Informaticists take the central stage when it comes to dissemination of information between healthcare providers, pharmacists, and physicians. Their role is to eliminate redundant or rather constant communication between these healthcare professionals by facilitation integration of information, knowledge, and data to support nurses, patients, and stakeholders in their decision-making. Nurse informaticists accomplish these aspects by continually ensuring faster, accurate, and timely update of the patients’ chart to facilitate the communication healthcare professionals concerned with the management of the patients. By doing this, nurse Informaticists spare the physicians and nurses the agony of spending time in every shift writing notes into each patient’s chart.
How to Improve the Interaction
Increase the Number of Nurse Informaticists
Our healthcare organization has two nurse informaticists and we greatly appreciate their tremendous contribution. Based on the number of patient we serve daily, I think we have a shortage of the number of nurse Informaticists. The two nurse informaticists we have usually end up working even beyond the recommended working hours. We cannot afford to hang the lives of patients by thread due to miscommunication or misinterpretation of information by a physician or a pharmacist because an overworked nurse informaticist relayed inaccurate information. Schneider (2014) asserts that generally, as a country, we are facing a shortage of nurse informaticists. According to Schneider (2014), this shortage has been attributed to the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Act of 2009 which facilitated the use of electronic health records. If we will increase the number of nurse informaticists, I believe the quality of service delivery will improved due to reduced impact of work overload and job-related stress for example, burnout (Khamisa, Oldenburg, Peltzer, & Ilic, 2015).
References
Khamisa, N., Oldenburg, B., Peltzer, K., & Ilic, D. (2015). Work Related Stress, Burnout, Job Satisfaction and General Health of Nurses. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 12(1), 652–666. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph120100652
Schneider, J. S. (2014). Nursing Informatics. Home Healthcare Nurse, 32(8), 497–498. https://doi.org/10.1097/nhh.0000000000000124
