Assignment: NSG 600 White Paper Assignment Fall
Assignment: NSG 600 White Paper Assignment Fall
Assignment: NSG 600 White Paper Assignment Fall
The advances in technology and the need for better patient care and outcomes have, in recent times, triggered research that focuses on the integration of various technological applications to enhance patient outcomes. Nursing as a profession has not been left behind since various stakeholders in nursing have, in the past and present, applied technology in patient care for better patient services and outcomes. One such application is nursing informatics (Kleib et al.,2021). Nursing informatics has taken advantage of the healthcare information revolution experienced in recent years to enable nurses and other clinicians to have better and more access to electronic health records, diagnostics, and treatment plans. Therefore, the purpose of this assignment is to write a white paper on the application of nursing informatics application. As such, various aspects will be addressed, including background or problems, solutions, and conclusions.
ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE ON; Assignment: NSG 600 White Paper Assignment Fall
Background
In recent years, there has been an increased use of the internet by most people, implying that individuals can easily access information from various internet sources. Patients are capable of reading about their illness and the care surrounding it even before the healthcare professionals trigger care activities. Therefore, there has been a need to improve patient care actions and services to help improve patient outcomes. In addition, various events in the patient care environment usually threaten the patient well being and increase the risk of mortality and morbidity. Among such events are medical errors and medication errors. Medical errors and medication errors are known to increase patient risk of mortality and morbidity (Assiri et al.,2018). Besides, it leads to the patient having prolonged stays in the hospital which has heightened the call for a better solution.
Medication and medical errors sometimes emanate from paperwork, where a professional writes wrong information or writes information that is difficult to read by other parties (Assiri et al.,2018). The result could be an error that harms the patient. Sometimes due to poorly managed patients and workflows, patients get poor services, such as delayed treatments and care, which ends up worsening their situation. Therefore, several aspects threaten the patient well-being in the clinical setting. As such, nursing informatics has been used for some time now to solve such problems facing patients in the care environment. Therefore, the next section explores various aspects of nursing informatics application, especially in reducing medication errors in the patient care environment.
The Solution
As discussed earlier, nurses play a significant role in the care of patients in the care environment through the use of various strategies. One such strategy is nursing informatics. According to the American Nurses Association (ANA), nursing informatics is a specialty that combines nursing science with analytical and information science with a focus on identifying, defining, managing, and communicating data, knowledge, and information in nursing practice (Wang et al.,2019). The definition implies that nursing informatics utilizes patient and organizational data to help improve patient outcomes and organizational operations.
Medication errors have several adverse outcomes for patients; therefore, a need to control them. Nursing informatics has been applied in this respect as an evidence-based approach to help solve the problem. As such, nursing informatics has been used to help improve efficiency, enhance communication, and boost collaboration. Among the informatics aspects used is the bar-coded medication administration system (Godshall & Riehl, 2018). These systems have been used to effectively prevent medication errors. Through the use of such a system, nurses can scan the bracelets used for identifying the patient to understand the appropriate unit dose. Such a scan is able to alert the nurse in case there is a mismatch, like age, administration route, name, and dose. Such an alert triggers an appropriate action to prevent the occurrence of medication errors hence promoting patient safety.
Medication errors occur in every healthcare setting as processes involved in giving medications may cause errors. Such processes include transcription, dispensing, and administration, and these processes can pose potential risks for serious patient harm and serious errors. The errors can happen due to various factors such as lack of concentration while handling the medications, insufficient knowledge in handling the medications, overlooked information, negligence, workload, and fatigue (Naidu & Alicia, 2019). When such errors occur, they can lead to injury and harm to the patients. In some instances, errors and mistakes can lead to adverse drug events, which may eventually result in the death of such patients.
Such informatics systems have been shown to substantially improve patient outcomes by reducing errors, especially those errors which are likely to be committed during medication administration. For example, such systems prompt the providers to follow every necessary procedure or step needed to execute a successful medication delivery since they have to verify the dosage to be delivered and ensure that they administer the medication in time (Godshall & Riehl, 2018). Following such guidelines also ensure that the providers administer the medication to the right patient and at the right time.
Barcode medication administration systems are also integrated with the electronic administration record to help improve inpatient medication safety. The integration of these two technologies helps in the automation of the medication verification process and the application of electronic administration records. The technology helps in the appropriate prevention of medication errors and near misses and helps the organization create a culture of patient safety. Therefore, through the use of the barcode medication administration systems integrated with the electronic administration record, the nurses can ensure that the medications are offered to the correct patients while adhering to the five rights of medication as supported by the electronic validation and documentation system (Naidu & Alicia, 2019). As a common practice, each medication to be administered has information encrypted in barcodes, and so the barcode identification tag on the patient’s barcode allows the provider to scan and verify that every detail matches before administering medication to the patients in each case. Therefore, apart from the reduction of medication errors, this application of nursing informatics also leads to lower healthcare spending and costs hence a cost-effective treatment.
Conclusion
Nursing informatics has played a significant role in patient care settings. Apart from improving the services offered to patients, nursing informatics has been applied to enhance the security of patient data and information. In addition, nursing informatics has been applied in the patient care environment to help reduce aspects such as medication and medical errors. In specific, the barcode medication administration systems integrated with the electronic administration record have widely been applied in various healthcare settings to improve patient outcomes by reducing medication errors. In addition, such systems have been used to improve the cost-effectiveness of patient care. Therefore, nursing informatics should be embraced by any patient care organization which aims of focuses on improving patient outcomes.
References
Assiri, G. A., Shebl, N. A., Mahmoud, M. A., Aloudah, N., Grant, E., Aljadhey, H., & Sheikh, A. (2018). What is the epidemiology of medication errors, error-related adverse events and risk factors for errors in adults managed in community care contexts? A systematic review of the international literature. BMJ Open, 8(5), e019101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-019101
Godshall, M., & Riehl, M. (2018). Preventing medication errors in the information age. Nursing2022, 48(9), 56-58. 10.1097/01.NURSE.0000544230.51598.38
Kleib, M., Chauvette, A., Furlong, K., Nagle, L., Slater, L., & McCloskey, R. (2021). Approaches for defining and assessing nursing informatics competencies: a scoping review. JBI Evidence Synthesis, 19(4), 794–841. Doi: 10.11124/JBIES-20-00100
Naidu, M., & Alicia, Y. L. Y. (2019). Impact of barcode medication administration and electronic medication administration record system in clinical practice for an effective medication administration process. Health, 11(05), 511. https://doi.org/10.4236/health.2019.115044
Wang, J., Gephart, S. M., Mallow, J., & Bakken, S. (2019). Models of collaboration and dissemination for nursing informatics innovations in the 21st Century. Nursing Outlook, 67(4), 419-432. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2019.02.003
BUY A CUSTOM PAPER HERE ON; Assignment: NSG 600 White Paper Assignment Fall
NSG 600: Nursing Informatics
The purpose of this assignment is to develop a white paper on a nursing informatics application. The following links provide resources on learning how to produce a white paper:
You can utilize other resources for developing this paper.
Your assignment should be no more than 4 pages (excluding the title page and references). APA 7th edition format is required. The paper will be submitted into the Assignment box and then posted in the Discussion section of Unit 4 for peer review by 2 of your classmates. Further directions on the peer review process are outlined in Unit 5-6 discussion.
The grading rubric for this assignment is the Grading Rubric for Written Assignments located in the first unit or Course Resources section of the D2L course.
Criteria
Introduction/Summary
Background/Problems
Solution
Advertisement (optional)
Conclusion
References
Peer review of 2 white papers. See Unit 5-6 Discussion for more details on completing the requirements for this section.