Learning Activities in Nursing Informatics Education: An Integrative Review of Strategies for Prelicensure Nursing Students

Background: Learning nursing informatics and mastering informatics skills are becoming essential components of entry-level baccalaureate nursing education. Nurses must not only perform and document nursing actions but also effectively use health data transmitted through informatics infrastructures to shape nursing practice. This poster presents an integrative review aimed at examining the pedagogical strategies used to educate prelicensure nursing students in the field of nursing informatics.

Problem: The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) has outlined competencies and essentials to ensure that prelicensure nurses are prepared to enter the practice. However, informatics competencies are often content-based versus psychomotor in nature, and conventional theory-based teaching methods may not adequately equip students to navigate complex, multi-dimensional informatics challenges.

Purpose: The purpose of this integrative review is to review learning activities being employed to teach nursing informatics skills in prelicensure nursing students.

Methods: This review followed an integrative review methodology and was reported using the PRISMA standards for reporting integrative reviews. Studies were searched using the MEDLINE and CINAHL databases. Studies of pedagogical interventions in diploma, undergraduate, and graduate entry-level nursing programs were eligible for review. Studies eligible for review were limited to publication between 2017 to 2022, capturing the period leading to the publication of the AACN 2021 Essentials.

Results: The search resulted in 10 articles eligible for review. The selected articles featured diverse populations of prelicensure nursing students from various countries across the globe. Educators employed five distinct pedagogical strategies to facilitate nursing informatics learning, including academic electronic health records (AEHR), flipped classrooms, case studies, specialized seminars, and clinical experiences.

Discussion: AEHR emerged as a popular approach, with studies revealing that the use of AEHR during nursing simulations significantly enhanced students' competence in charting, understanding provider prescriptions, and managing patient medications. Flipped classrooms, involving the use of cinema clips to teach key informatics concepts, also yielded positive results, with students reporting increased knowledge and a willingness to recommend this learning method to others. Case studies were used to teach standardized taxonomy in nursing documentation, improving students' understanding of nursing documentation through the application of a standardized nursing language. Specialized seminars demonstrated the effectiveness of comprehensive nursing documentation in improving students' documentation practices. Clinical experiences played a vital role in preparing nurses for digital health, but students struggled to grasp their role in nursing informatics.

Conclusion: In conclusion, this integrative review highlights the need for a more comprehensive understanding of the pedagogical strategies employed in nursing informatics education. While the studies discussed in this review provide a promising foundation for further research, future efforts should focus on clarifying the conceptual and operational aspects of informatics education, as well as exploring the timing and duration of informatics education to enhance its impact on prelicensure nursing students. This research will play a crucial role in strengthening nursing informatics education and equipping future nurses to meet the evolving challenges of modern healthcare practice.