Nursing and Informatics for the 21st Century - Embracing a Digital World, 3rd Edition - Book 2

Nursing Education and Digital Health Strategies

Connie Delaney, Charlotte Weaver, Joyce Sensmeier, Lisiane Pruinelli, Patrick Weber, Connie Delaney, Charlotte Weaver, Joyce Sensmeier, Lisiane Pruinelli, Patrick Weber, Connie White Delaney, Charlotte Weaver, Joyce Sensmeier, Lisiane Pruinelli, Patrick Weber

• Publisher: Productivity Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000573473
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Pharmaceutical, Biotechnology & Healthcare Industry
• Index: Business

Nursing Education and Digital Health Strategies explores the current state of health and healthcare education, as well as that of nursing informatics education. These topics include technologies-enabled education for all nurses and interprofessional collaborations from a worldwide perspective. The "New" learning for applied critical thinking will include technology, content, skills versus tools, and the use of "smart" systems for care delivery, the role of critical thinking, and uniqueness of nursing care delivery. Further, how these changes are understood as a paradigm shift that needs to be incorporated along with nursing and healthcare education is emphasized. The effects of technology on human behavior are also explored, addressing human–factors interaction, interdependence of human–computer interaction, and other effects of technology on wellbeing. As part of nursing education, learning from clients/patients to better shape and advance nursing education and scholarship are discussed. Academic–clinical practice partnerships for a digital future, how teams are working together (clinician/teacher) for better healthcare delivery and applied knowledge—including joint appointments (exchange of academia and applied expertise), academic–applied human resources, and interprofessional learning/development—are discussed.

This book closes by discussing and using case studies to showcase nursing competencies for the next decade, implications for preparing the healthcare workforce for a digital world, faculty readiness, and the interaction with gaming and simulations. Nursing informatics education, including continuing education beyond academia, i.e., informal education, worldwide, as well as global challenges to support digital world capabilities are described. Hands-on Experiential Delivery and learning-based case studies are also included.

Nursing and Informatics for the 21st Century – Embracing a Digital World, 3rd Edition is comprised of four books which can be purchased individually:

Book 1: Realizing Digital Health – Bold Challenges and Opportunities for Nursing

Book 2: Nursing Education and Digital Health Strategies

Book 3: Innovation, Technology, and Applied Informatics for Nurses

Book 4: Nursing in an Integrated Digital World that Supports People, Systems, and the Planet

Chapter 1
Nursing Informatics Educational Programs in Academia and in Practice

Brenda Kulhanek and Patricia Sengstack

DOI: 10.4324/9781003281009-1

Contents

Introduction

The Need for Informatics Education

What Are Informatics Skills and Competencies?

Existing Curricula for Informatics Education

The Delivery of Informatics Education in Academia

International Nursing Informatics Education

Faculty Informatics Competency

Challenges

Summary

References

Introduction

The American Nursing Association’s Scope and Standards of Practice for Nursing Informatics (Nursing Informatics: Scope and Standards of Practice, 2015) defines the informatics nurse specialist (INS) as a registered nurse with formal graduate-level education in informatics or in an informatics-related field. Over the last three decades, academic institutions across the United States have evolved to provide this graduate education. In 1988, the first graduate program in nursing informatics was established in the United States at the University of Maryland, followed in 1990 by an informatics program at the University of Utah (Ozbolt & Saba, 2008). Over subsequent years, informatics programs have emerged both in-person and online across the nation. At this time, there are over 50 academic institutions offering graduate degrees in nursing or healthcare informatics primarily at the master’s level, with several institutions offering post master’s certifications. To meet the growing need to train nursing informatics leaders at even higher levels, a few institutions now offer doctoral study in the field of informatics at the doctorate of nursing practice (DNP) or PhD levels. While the primary focus was originally on graduate-level education in the field, undergraduate nursing programs have been challenged with integrating informatics content into baccalaureate-level curricula. With nurses comprising the largest sector of the healthcare workforce, and technology evolving at an almost impossible pace, academe realizes that baccalaureate nurses must be prepared to effectively design, use and evaluate technology they will work with on a daily basis. Similar structures and challenges in informatics education can be seen at the international level as nations across the globe implement electronic health records and other technologies. This chapter will describe the current state of informatics education both nationally and abroad. The challenges that confront academia will be illustrated with a closing call to action for educators to continuously improve how we prepare nurses to effectively design and use technology in all healthcare settings.

The Need for Informatics Education

Health information technology is used to support and deliver healthcare in almost all areas within the United States (Colicchio et al., 2019; McBride et al., 2018). With over four million registered and practical nurses using some form of health information technology in their daily practice, there is a growing need to provide education and informatics competencies for all nurses (Farzandipour et al., 2021; Smiley et al., 2018). Nurses who are competent in their understanding and use of health information technology experience fewer healthcare-associated errors, provide safer care, practice more efficiently, produce reliable data for their organizations, and have higher job satisfaction (Aiken et al., 2018; Al-Rawajfah & Tubaishat, 2019; Billings et al., 2019; Brown et al., 2020; Colicchio et al., 2019; Craswell et al., 2016; De Leeuw et al., 2020; Furukawa, 2020; Lambooij et al., 2017; Muthee et al., 2018).

The use of health information technology is rapidly increasing. In the hospital environment nurses may interact with 15 or more devices during their daily work as more devices are being requested to further enhance care efficiency and patient monitoring (Kang et al., 2019). Additionally, added technology may not be interconnected and may require additional skills and competency to operate the equipment within the patient care ecosystem (Aldrich, 2017).

The 2001 sentinel Institute of Medicine (IOM) report stated that increased and effective use of HIT could provide a solution for reducing healthcare-associated errors (Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, 2001). The nursing profession has often been excluded from ongoing HIT conversations, delaying progress toward attainment of education and competency in the use of HIT for nurses (Weaver & Skiba, 2006). Improved informatics competencies for all nurses contributes to enhanced nursing wisdom through better access to data, information and knowledge (Nation & Wangia-Anderson, 2019).

The development of enhanced nursing informatics competencies is dependent on academic programs and faculty that can produce nurses and INS that are well educated and competent (Rahman, 2015; Sensmeier et al., 2017). However, in the United States, of the workforce of almost 4 million nurses, almost half attended nursing school prior to the incorporation of HIT into nursing practice (Zhang et al., 2018), resulting in a large segment of the nursing workforce that did not obtain informatics education in their academic programs, creating a knowledge and competency gap (Furst et al., 2013; Kinnunen et al., 2019). In an environment where nurses may not receive informatics education during their pre- or post-licensure education, and where a limited number of nursing informatics specialists are available, the importance of informatics education and competency for all nurses cannot be understated (Kinnunen et al., 2017; O’Connor et al., 2017).

In 2004, the Technology Informatics Guiding Education Reform (TIGER) initiative established an initial mission of raising awareness of the need for health information technology competency among all nurses (‘The TIGER Initiative—Informatics Competencies for Every Practicing Nurse: Recommendations from the TIGER Collaborative,’ 2006), leading to a call for action to add informatics competencies into nursing school curricula (Sensmeier, 2007). Despite the recommendations of the initial TIGER conference in 2006, just over half of the top 25 online Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) schools included informatics in their curricula, two-thirds of online nurse master’s programs contained informatics content and 80% of the online DNP programs contained informatics content. These numbers have changed little since a 2013 report (Bove, 2020). A majority of pre-licensure nursing schools report integrating informatics into the curriculum. However, closer inspection reveals that since faculty can interpret the use of technology for online coursework as nursing informatics, the study results may be questionable (Vottero, 2017). An additional barrier to the continuing expansion of informatics education into academic programs involves faculty knowledge and comfort with the informatics subject matter. The ongoing development of nursing informatics competencies through nursing education has been hindered by gaps in faculty informatics knowledge, experience and support of the importance of nursing informatics concepts (Jeon et al., 2016; McGowan et al., 2020).

What Are Informatics Skills and Competencies?

Competency is the successful and consistent integration of knowledge, skills, ability, personal values, attitudes, critical thinking and clinical decision-making in a real-world setting (Farzandipour et al., 2021). Over the past three decades, multiple nursing informatics competency models have been developed, each using a different lens to identify informatics competencies for different nursing roles (Table 1.1). The first attempt at exploring informatics competencies for nurses resulted in a list of discrete tasks for the practicing nurse, nurse leader, nurse educator and nurse researcher (Grobe, 1989). One of the first attempts at refining nursing informatics competencies resulted in a list of 304 informatics competencies categorized for the beginning nurse, the experienced nurse, the informatics specialist, and the informatics innovator (Staggers et al., 2001). A 2002 Delphi study later reduced the original list to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Deborah Trautman
• Foreword by Kedar Mate
• Foreword by Howard Catton
• Preface
• Acknowledgement
• Editors
• Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Nursing Informatics Educational Programs in Academia and in Practice
• 2 International Health and Healthcare Education Current State
• 3 Health and Healthcare Education Current State
• 4 Using Digital as a Tool, Not Being the Tool of the Technology Giants
• 5 Learning from Clients/Patients to Advance Education and Scholarship
• 6 Cultivating a Workforce of Nurse Disruptors: An Academic–Practice Innovation Hub
• 7 Nursing Education and Digital Health Strategies
• 8 Nursing Informatics Competencies for the Next Decade
• 9 Interprofessional Practice and Education: Interrelationship with Knowledge Generation, the IPE Core Data Set and National Information Exchange Infrastructure
• 10 The use of the IMIA Education Recommendations and the IMIA Knowledge Base as a Foundation for Competencies in Health Informatics in Africa
• 11 Simulation-Based Learning from across the Globe
• Index