UNIT-IV ANP CONTENT
TRENDS IN NURSING INFORMATICS AND
NURSING INFORMATICS
Dr. Anjalatchi Muthukumaran
Vice Principal
Era College Of Nursing, Era University

TRENDS IN NURSING INFORMATIC
 INTRODUCTION
 The information revolution has changed the health
care system to an unbelievable extent. Integration
of informatics in nursing is going beyond data
processing functions such as payroll, to an
important role in patient care by: interpreting ECG,
entering orders, reporting results, and preventing
drug interactions (by cross referencing drug
compatibilities and warning the appropriate staff).
Nurses are using information systems in clinical
practice, administration, research and education.

HISTORY OF HEALTH INFORMATICS
 Initially, the term medical informatics was used to describe”
those collected informational technologies which concern
themselves with the patient care, medical, decision making
process” (Greenburg 1975).
 Greenes and Shortliffe (1990) redefined medical informatics
as “the field that concerns itself with the cognitive, information
processing and communication tasks of medical practice,
education and research, including the information science and
the technology to support these tasks, an intrinsically
interdisciplinary field with an applied focus addressing a
number of fundamental research problems as well as planning
and policy issues"
 Reston 1984, gave a parallel definition of medical informatics.
Since nurses are health care practitioners who are involved in
patient care decision- making process that uses information
technologies, there clearly was a place for nursing in medical
informatics.

 Mandil (1991), coined the phrase “health
informatics” which he defined as the use of
information technology( including both hardware
and software) with information management
concepts and methods to support the delivery of
health care.
 Health informatics encompasses medical, nursing,
dental, and pharmacy informatics. Health
informatics focuses attention on the recipient of
care rather than on the discipline of the care giver.

DEFINITION
 Nursing informatics, as originally defined, refers to
the use of information technologies in relation those
functions within the purview of nursing, and that are
carried out by nurses when performing their duties.
 Nursing informatics is “a combination of computer
science, information science, and nursing science
designed to assist in the management and
processing of nursing data, information and
knowledge to support the practice of nursing and
the delivery of nursing care. ( Graves and
Corcoran, 1989).

CURRENT TRENDS AND ISSUES
 As nurses have been practicing in the automation
of healthcare data and the integration of nursing
data within information systems, a realization of the
need for agreed-on definitions of the appropriate
elements describing clients and their care came to
light. (Grier, 1984; Mortiz, 1990).
 Werely and Lang 1998, have identified and
described the need for a standardized data set in
nursing, the Nursing Minimum Data Set in Nursing,
the Nursing Minimum Data Set( NMDS). Adoption
of the NMDS would allow for an ongoing collection
of data that can be compared across setting and
client populations for clinical and administrative
decision making.

 According to the study groups on Nursing
Information Systems (1983), computerizing the data
facilitates the management and use of the
information by standardization, organization and
automation to produce timely and comprehensive
information. The NMDS provides structure for
electronic storage of nursing data, and the unified
nursing language provides the substantive data
definition to be stored in that structure (Hannah&
Shaniman, 1992).

GENERAL PURPOSES
 Nursing’s data needs fall into four domains:Nurse need
data about client care, provider staffing, administration
of care and the organization, and knowledge based
research. The first three are distinct areas, whereas
research interacts with all of the other three.
The four areas and the source for the data are:
 Client: client care/ clinical care and its evaluation,
clinical data, and client outcomes. Source: the client
record.
 Provider: professional data, caregiver outcomes, and
decision maker variables. Source: personnel records,
national data banks, and links to client records.


 Administrative: management and resource
oversight, administrative data, system outcomes,
and contextual variables. Source: executive/
managerial data and fiscal and regulatory data.
 Research: knowledge base development. Source:
existing and newly gathered data and relational
data bases.
 Eg: outcome and variables in three domains of
nursing data needs.

DOMAIN
Outcomes
Client
 Client satisfaction
 Achieved care outcomes
 Costs
 Access to health care
Provider
 Job enrichment
 Job/work satisfaction
 Physician satisfaction
 Job stress
 Intent to leave
Administrative
 Costs
 Productivity
 Turn over
 Income

VARIABLES
Client
 Attitudes/ beliefs
 Diagnosis, gender, age
 Marital status
 Support systems
 Satisfaction
 Level of dependency
 Severity of illness
 Intensity of nursing care
Provider
 Attitudes, beliefs
 Education
 Years of experience
 Age
 Work excitement
Administrative
 Agency philosophy
 Priorities
 Organizational structure
 Climate
 Policy and procedures
 Conflict

CONCLUSION
 As almost all care settings are moving towards the use
of computers for all health care information, nurses are
challenged to explore new ways of working and
documenting their practice.
 Computer is making it possible to audit records on an
ongoing basis and provide feedback to care providers
on the completeness of their documentation.
 Information retrieval may become easier and individual
segments of data may be pooled to enable statistical
analysis of the effectiveness of various practices in
achieving desired patient outcomes.
 As nurses participate in these changes, it is imperative
that there may be thoughtful evaluation of how computer
systems can contribute to quality of care rather than the
computer system being the controlling force for practice.

REFERENCES
 Huber D. Leadership and nursing care management. ( 1 st
edn). Philadelphia: W.B Saunders company; 1996.
 Ellis R E, Hartely C L. Managing and coordinating nursing
care.( 3 rd edn). Philadelphia: Lippincott; 1995.
 Hannah K J, Ball M J& Edwards. Introduction to nursing
informatics. Newyork: Springer- Verlag, 1994.
 Cashen M S, Bradley V, Farrel A, Murphy J, Schleyer R,
Sensmeir J, Dykes PC. Exploring the impact of health
information technology on communication and collaboration in
acute care nursing. Stud Health Technol Inform. 2006;
122:575-9.
 Lee TT.Nurses' experiences using a nursing information
system: early stage of technology implementation. Comput
Inform Nurs. 2007 Sep-Oct; 25(5):294-300
 Van de Castle B.The perfect role for nursing informatics:
Nursing staff development. Stud Health Technol Inform.
2006;122:241-3

Nursing
informatics

INTRODUCTION
Nursing informatic
 The implementation of information technologies in
nursing care settings is on the rise. Informatics
competencies are increasingly considered a basic
skill for every nurse(Yoon et al, 2009).

DEFINITIONS
 Health care informatics has been defined as, ‘‘the integration of
health sciences, computer science, information science, and
cognitive science to assist in the management of health care
information’’. (Saba & Mccormick, (2001)
 Health care informatics may be decided in to specialties like:
(Guenther, 2006) -
 medical informatics,
 health informatics,
 dental informatics, and
 nursing informatics
 Medical informatics, refers to information technologies that
concern patient care and the medical decision-making process.
 Health informatics refers to educational technology for health
care
clients or the general public (Young, 2000).
 Nursing informatics refers to electronic information combined with
nursing and any aspect of clinical practice, administration,
research, or education (Guenther, 2006).

JOURNALS ON INFORMATICS
NURSING
 CIN: Computers Informatics Nursing (formerly,
Computers in Nursing)
 Journal of the American Medical Informatics
Association (JAMIA)
 International Journal of Medical Informatics (IJMI)
 International Journal of Bio-Medical Computing
(IJBC)
 Online Journal of Nursing Informatics (OJNI)

CONCLUSION
 Nursing informatics is a developing field of study
that is highly interdisciplinary. It is strongly
connected to education, business, and computer
science. (Guenther, 2006)

REFERENCES
 Yoon S. Yun PY, Bakken S. Psychometric
Properties of the Self-Assessment of Nursing
Informatics Competencies Scale. Stud Health
Technol Inform. 2009 ; 146: 546–550
 Saba VK, Mccormick KA. Essentials of computers
for nursing: informatics for the new millennium. 3rd
ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. 2001.
 Young KM. Informatics for health professionals.
Philadelphia, PA: F. A. Davis, 2000.
 Guenther JT. Mapping the literature of nursing
informatics. J Med Libr Assoc 94(2) Supplement
2006.