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NURSING INFORMATICS
There are many definitions for nursing informatics; however
the following is one that stands out:
"Nursing informatics is the multidisciplinary scientific
endeavour of analysing, formalising and modelling how nurses how nurses collect
and manage data, process data into information and knowledge, make
knowledge-based decisions and inferences for patient care, and use empirical
and experiential knowledge to in order to broaden the scope and enhance the
quality of their professional practice.” 1
Nursing informatics has
assumed a role in healthcare that ensures that data collected by nurses along
with clinical knowledge is structured in a way that it is acceptable and
accessible to other areas of healthcare. 2
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The American Nursing Informatics Association (ANIA)
is a professional organisation that that promotes nursing informatics in the
US. In the United Kingdom, nursing informatics is promoted by the
British Computer Society (BCS) Nursing Specialist Group.
Through the development and evaluation of data management tools and the proper
harnessing of advances in information technology, nursing informatics has been
able to assist nurses in all areas of nursing practice.
One such area has been the development of the Nursing Information System (NIS),
which can either stand-alone or be integrated to a Hospital Information System
(HIS). NIS records all aspects of a patient’s nursing care from admission to
discharge. Some of the data collected include diagnosis, nursing plans, and
dietary information, treatment details such as operations and investigations,
and patient observations.
NIS ensures that the data
captured is structured through the use of Classification
Systems such as North American Nursing
Diagnosis Association (NANDA) and SNOMED
RT.
In December 1995, the
American Nursing Association (ANA) established the
Nursing Information and Data Set Evaluation Centre to:
- Develop and disseminate standards pertaining to information
systems that support the documentation of nursing practice, and
- Evaluate voluntarily submitted systems against those
standards.
References
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Goossen, WTF. Nursing information management and processing: a
framework and definition for systems analysis, design and evaluation. International
Journal of Biomedical Computing. 1996; 40: 187-195.
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Graves, J.; Corcoran, S. The study of nursing informatics. Journal
of Nursing Scholarship. 1989; 21, 227-231
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