Rethinking the Infusion of Informatics into Nursing Practice

The impact of the informatics gap in nursing and healthcare has been recognized at a national and global level. Informatics processes and information technology is an essential part of the infrastructure of healthcare today and is implemented to improve access to care and health information, provide safer care, and decrease healthcare costs. This gap is so significant that it has triggered mention in the Nursing 2020-2030 report and spurred changes in nursing education expected competencies as outlined within the new American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) Essentials for Professional Nursing Education. The updated AACN Essentials outlines ten intersecting competency domains, including a specified set of informatics and healthcare technology subcompetencies that are both demonstrable and measurable.

However, there are two challenges. First, it is urgent that nurses at the entry-to-practice and advanced levels be competent to thrive and lead in today’s technology and data rich environment because it is impossible to separate clinical practice from the data, information, and technology that drive it. Informatics competencies involve any actions performed by nurses in their daily practice that involve the intersection between humans and data or technology. Examples include texting, entering and locating data to create information, chronicling assessment findings and outcomes, and disseminating knowledge. Errors associated with insufficient informatics capability include failure to recognize health patterns and trends across time, patient disability and death due to inability to locate key information in the EHR, overreliance on technology, failure to respond to alerts and monitors, nursing burnout, unsafe workarounds, and poor patient outcomes. The responsibility for improving daily practice informatics competency rests on nursing educators, academia, healthcare organizations, nursing leaders, and front-line nurses. However, educators and faculty often do not have the competency or basic understanding of this domain to adequately plan for and deliver the learning content in relation to the core content they deliver.

Second, there are many more nurse educators than there are academic-based informatics trained faculty. Therefore, a national train-the-trainer process with multiorganizational collaboration is under development. ANIA is a key partner. Resources and tools are being developed to provide professional development, education materials, and potential curricular ideas for nursing faculty, leaders, educators, and practicing nurses to infuse into their teaching and mentoring. Included in the resources will be competency self-assessment tools, guidance for professional development, toolkits with case studies, teaching resources, and learner assessment ideas that will allow a clinical educator or professional development staff member to determine a student’s capability to thrive and lead. Information in the materials can also guide practice sites in their development of job descriptions and career ladders.