Question

Nurses and license personnel should have a basic knowledge of computer and computer fluency (KSA: Knowledge, skills, and attitudes) before working with patient. By having this knowledge, the nurse will eventually be more credible, provide accurate and reliable source of information to the patient and family member during administration and patient education. For example, the nurse during the patient education should provide resource for more information such as government health web page, video, or article on previous or ongoing research study depending on the patient literacy and condition, and prefer method of learning.    

In clinical practice, and research, nurses should technology and evidence to support and inform site and give credit to the source where they took the information by doing a refence at the end of the presentation or the research.

   Nursing informatics is important in the nursing practice because it help the nurse in task “managing data, information, and knowledge, alleviating errors, and promoting safety, supporting decision making, and improving the quality of patient care” (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2018). Using the informatic systems, the nurse can read ABC, and EKG monitoring, set an IV pump, navigate in the health care data base, and report or enter patient information, and change of condition of patient in the appropriate page safely.

Do you agree yes or no?

Answer 1

Answer:

Yes ,I am in agreement  with the fact that the nurse should be familiar with the use of healthcare technology and have a basic knowledge of computer and computer fluency. I believe that nursing Informatics is important in nursing practice especially in the aspects of managing data and information .

However its relevance to the improved patient care quality depends upon it's proper application as the objective data based care alone cannot a dictate quality outcome in medical settings and requires to be supplementated by  crucial patient caregiver interaction and interaction observation details.

I agree that Technology can offer assimilation of the objective patient data, the patient records, the laboratory reports but the technology does not have human interface and cannot analyse the subjective data and human emotions and feelings which are very important and form the crux in the caregiving aspects of nursing profession.

Technology forms the guiding data and knowledge base but it is not a replacement for the normal human intelligence,healing interaction ,clinical analytic powers and does not replace the personal patient caregiver interaction which forms the basis of the nursing profession.

It is important for the nurse to be familiar with the computer literacy and Technology as that helps in organizing data and information to use for patient care .The agreement of the above statements opens up debate of advantages and disadvantages of nursing Informatics and computer technology.

I would like to discuss/debate the advantages and disadvantages of nursing Informatics and computer technology in the medical field with respect to the statements given above individually.

1. 'The nursing and licence personnel should have a basic knowledge of computer and computer fluency before working with the patient'.

I am in agreement with this statement   because this knowledge will help to extract the patient  data from the computers and have much more reliable information ,

However the limitation of this is that all healthcare organizations do not have electronized records Again,the interpretation of the data is based on the sound clinical care knowledge which the nursing/licence professional has acquired during the course of his or her training. It is this basic training background which helps to interpret the data,integrate it to the patient's current situation and provide source of information to the patient and his family and not just the computer fluency alone.

Computers aide in data retention but the interpretation depends on the sound clinical knowledge of the nursing and licence personnel regarding patient 's condition.

2. 'During the patient interaction. nurses should provide resources for more information s government health webpage or article on previous ongoing research study depending on the patient literacy and condition and preferred method of learning'.

Yes, If the patient is technologysavvy,educated and has a scientific approach towards life, this method can be effective in patient teaching .However if the patient has a poor knowledge of technology ,is not very educated and has a desire for learning through human interaction ;this makes the patient education aspect  of nursing mechanical and in effective for that particular patient.

To be able to provide patient education based on the sound clinical and medical nursing knowledge is essential to nursing practice

.Nurses can use technology as a helper or an aide for the patients who are educated and have scientific approach only. However this cannot be applied for the human population at large as a culturally competent patient care and patient education has to be given.Computerised learning/reference to a website article or a resource cannot replace the human touch to the learning aspect of patient education nor can it be comprehended whether the patient has understood the relevant aspects clearly.

3.' In clinical practice and research, the nurse should use technology and evidence to support and inform the site and give credit to the source from where the took the information by doing a reference at the end of presentation for the research.'

I am in agreement wit the above statement. Technology is an important educational tool for nursing and integrated into every aspect of nursing education.Providing the references to the previous researches and literature is important for the nurses to be able to write papers and do nursing research

However this should be done with the clear scientific approach without resorting to paraphrasing and plagiarism. The technology should be used to study/analyse the previous studies done but the work that should be done by the nursing professional should be based by his or her own experiences in experimental studies /observations and be original. There should be no bias created in the interpretation of his her on study /experiment/ research because of the references/results from the previus studies in the literature.

4.'Nursing informatics is important because it helps in managing data information and knowledge, alleivating errors and promoting safety supporting decision making and improving quality of patient care.'

I agree with this statement partly that nursing Informatics can help in managing data information and knowledge but alleviating the errors, promoting safety ,supporting decision making and quality of patient care is more of application of human Intelligence and nursing care to the interpretation of the data that is provided by the nursing Informatics.

The Informatics applications systems cannot analyse the subjective data related to the patient is suffering and health conditions and hence the errors may or may not be eliminated by the the use of nursing Informatics. They may/may not contribute to additional safety for improvement in the quality of patient care. The data has to be integrated with the subjective data of the patient and clinically analysed by the caregiver based on his or her own clinical judgement of the previous patient history ,patient interaction and the current patient condition to be able to provide quality care.

Nursing Informatics can provide a ready referral to upgrade the knowledge in cases of different patient clinical situations but cannot provide clinical monitoring which which is important to the patient care.

For example for a patient in septicemia in ICU care, the technology of nursing informatics can give all the parameters like the temperature, pulses blood pressure,ECG,ABG but it cannot pickup the skin purpura  which the patient has developed an account of septicemia related thrombocytopenia. Technlogy is helpful but  cannot be relied upon for the complete holistic patient care for which personal nursing attention in patient monitoring is required

5.'Using the Informatics a system the nurse can read the ABG,EKG monitoring .set up an IV pump ,navigate in the Healthcare database and report or enter patient information and the change of the condition of the patient in the appropriate pages safely.'

  yes. I agree the Informatics system can help the nurse to read the the ABG and ECG and navigate in the patient Healthcare database . However it come with the disadvantages of being dependent on the server /the power/sotware and the effective functioning of the computers. Technology comes with its own limitations. While the nursing Informatics system can help to ease the nursing care, they are also time-consuming and power/ server /software dependent and need expertise costly maintenance.

Summary:

I agree that the use of modernTechnology, Computer technology and nursing Informatics are important aspects of nursing practices and help in improving the patient care but they have to be guided by a sound nursing knowledge, culturally competent and ethical nursing practices.

The nurses in nursing practices have to take cognizance of the fact while Technology provides aggregated assimilated objective patient data and interpretation it does not provide subjective data which forms the  ground for the nursing care.

The nurses in nursing education can use technology as an aide for their Research and Education but it should not create bias,kill the spirit of scientific enquiry which is the very basis on which the new research is based.