The role of nurse leaders is to develop competencies that will help in promoting the incorporation of information technology into the nurse practice. The salient skills required are of data collection, analysis and utilization of data in the daily nursing practice. Moreover, the incorporation of information and technology is meant to have a substantial decrease in overall costs of healthcare (Turriago-Hoyos et al., 2016). The nurse leaders have the responsibility to ensure that the technology applied is useful in helping promote better care for the patents. It is also crucial to ensure that the technology applied is reliable and logical in terms of the outcomes expected (Ajanaku & Mutula, 2018). The use of the electronic data systems is gaining momentum and it is helping translate the findings into quality patient care, promote nurse education and nurse research for effective patient care services.

References

Ajanaku, O. J., & Mutula, S. (2018). The relationship between knowledge management and nursing care performance. South African Journal of Libraries and Information Science, 84(2), 39-51. http://dx.doi.org/10.7553/84-2-1785

Darvish, A., Bahramnezhad, F., Keyhanian, S., & Navidhamidi, M. (2015). The role of nursing informatics in promoting the quality of health care and the need for appropriate education. Global journal of health science, 6(6), 11–18. https://doi.org/10.5539/gjhs.v6n6p11

Turriago-Hoyos, A., Thoene, U., & Arjoon, S. (2016). Knowledge workers and virtues in Peter Drucker’s management theory. SAGE Open, 6(1), 2158244016639631. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244016639631

A knowledge worker plays a key role in the organization in generating knowledge.  They obtain, maneuver, interpret and apply information to carry out multidisciplinary, complex organizational work (Field & Chan, 2018). Besides, knowledge workers analyze data and use their expertise to address problems, generate ideas, and develop new products and services.

Knowledge work is often complex, and knowledge workers need certain skills, abilities, and acquaintance with factual and theoretical knowledge (Field & Chan, 2018).  Therefore, knowledge workers must obtain, access, recall, and apply data, interact well with others, and have the ability and motivation to obtain and enhance these skills.

Knowledge workers’ roles include making decisions whereby they work with ideas. Their duties focus on intellectual rather than physical power and are characterized by non-repetitive tasks (Field & Chan, 2018). In addition, they use various methods and techniques to address problems and are authorized to decide what work methods to employ to complete their job tasks. Knowledge workers include: scientists, professionals, educators, and information system designers.

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Nursing informatics is a specialty that incorporates nursing science with analytical sciences and information management. It seeks to discover, define, manage, and convey data, information, and knowledge in nursing practice (Moore et al., 2020). Nursing informatics supports nurses, the interprofessional health care team, healthcare consumers, patients, and stakeholders in decision-making in various roles and settings to attain desired outcomes. It supports this through information structures, processes, and technology (Moore et al., 2020).

Nursing informatics skills are applied to:

Create data structures and software tools to support nursing practice (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017).

Keep EHR in line with best practices for data management, processing, and organization.

Apply analytics in evaluating and facilitating nursing processes (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017).

Facilitate communication among healthcare and IT professionals.

Train providers on the best use of EHRs and CDSS (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017).

Nurse leaders are knowledge workers. Nurse leader competencies at the organization or system level are connected to knowledge management. Nurse leaders’ roles as knowledge workers include: Facilitating organizational learning by supporting nurses as they find, share, and develop knowledge to advance nursing practice.  Developing and improving knowledge worker skills aligned to obtaining and analyzing data and examining clinical trends and patterns (Carroll, 2019).

They develop innovative approaches to improve access to health care, improve the quality of care, and reduce healthcare costs.

Nurse leaders focus on utilizing technology and developing electronic systems that will enhance data collection and analysis (Carroll, 2019).

Nurse leaders analyze data to establish information that is valuable in enhancing the delivery of patient care and improving the quality of care and health outcomes (Carroll, 2019).

Patient falls among geriatrics is a hypothetical scenario that would benefit from collecting and applying data in our healthcare organization. They result in severe injuries on patients, such as head trauma and fractures, which prolong hospital stay and increase healthcare costs (Venema et al., 2019). Data that could be used in relation to patient falls include the number of patient falls and common conditions of patients who suffer falls (Lucero et al., 2019). In addition, data on the length of hospitalization from falls and patient costs incurred from falls can be used to address the issue of falls.

Patient falls data can be collected from patients’ records and a hospital’s incidence reporting system (Lucero et al., 2019). The data can provide knowledge on patients’ at the highest risk of falls and the factors that put patients at risk of falls in the inpatient units. Data on the diseases with the highest falls can offer insight into the patients’ conditions that health providers should take additional measures to prevent falls (Lucero et al., 2019). Furthermore, the data can enlighten nurses on the gaps in patient care that contribute to patient falls and the measures they should implement to address the issue (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017).

REFERENCES

McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2017). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Moore, E. C., Tolley, C. L., Bates, D. W., & Slight, S. P. (2020). A systematic review of the impact of health information technology on nurses’ time. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 27(5), 798-807. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocz231

Venema, D. M., Skinner, A. M., Nailon, R., Conley, D., High, R., & Jones, K. J. (2019). Patient and system factors associated with unassisted and injurious falls in hospitals: an observational study. BMC geriatrics, 19(1), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-019-1368-8