Skills required to ensure Adherence to the Policy Requirements

Healthcare has undergone numerous adjustments in order to meet patient safety and confidentiality concerns.

Nursing Informatics (NI) is one of the approaches that has been implemented in the system to address the challenges. To improve nursing practice, NI has combined several information management and analytical sciences with nursing science (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2011). As a result, NI is one of the practices that tops the list while looking for best practices rules in the XYZ Hospital to improve patient safety and confidentiality. This article aims to educate XYZ Organization’s management and stakeholders on the importance of having NI as a best practice policy. Need for Nursing Informatics (NI) Best-practices Policy in XYZ Hospital

The inclusion of NI system at XYZ Hospital

will play an essential role in facilitating a fast delivery of quality patient care that will, in turn, improve their satisfaction (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2011). When the patients are contented with the quality of the services offered at the organization, it will be the best way to maintain the “Magnet Status” of the hospital. NI will also enable a high standard nursing care as there will be a significant improvement in the communication between the professionals or staffs with accuracy and speed in the manner in which they handle their duties. The system will also enable the medical professionals to access the computer systems with their passwords or security keys from any location and will easily allow them to attend to the patients when in and outside the premises as they will be in a position to enter the orders that are made by the patients (Ball et al., 2011). The security keys and passwords will help in limiting unauthorized access to the patients’ information hence improving their privacy and confidentiality. The policy will also allow the patients to have a large variety of choices for the nurses and patients who want to access any information in regards to XYZ. The hospital will have a website where all information relation to the services and medications such as their side effects and indications will be easily available.

Purpose Statement

The intention of this article is to enlighten the stakeholders of XYZ on some of the necessities of having nursing informatics as a best practice policy to address the issues of patient safety and confidentiality. NI will be substantial of the hospital as it will enhance the quality of patient care in many ways. While the article is specifically meant for the XYZ Hospital, the discussion and information can as well be of benefit to other healthcare facilities who wish to explore the growing need for NI in the healthcare system (Ball et al., 2011). NI can be the best way to address the issues of accuracy and efficiency in XYZ as communication between the patients, the medical professionals, and the management can be faster hence there will be no delays in the operations within the facility. The introduction of the computerized healthcare system will also discourage the problem of unauthorized access to vital information of the hospital and patients which ensure that confidentiality is highly maintained.

Secure Practices, Data Security, and Patient Confidentiality

According to Ball et al. (2011), patient privacy; will refer to the status that will be accorded to the data within XYX that will be considered sensitive and will need protection from theft, improper use or disclosure and only require to be disseminated correctly to the authorized individuals or parties with the consent of the interested parties. On the other hand, data security; imply that there will mean that will be used to control the access which will be protecting the information within the facility’s database from any form of accidental of intended disclosure of to any unauthorized party and destruction, alteration, and any possible loss (Cherry & Jacob, 2016). Secure practice will be the process that will ensure that all the active protection measures are in place.

Ethical standards of NI at XYZ

There are various ethical standards for an effective implementation of nursing informatics that ensures that the system is implemented in a manner in line with the nursing professionalism. Therefore, according to Cherry and Jacob (2016), some of the ethical issues that need to be considered in NI to ensure safety and confidentiality at XYZ will include; all the computer programs will be used in clinical practice after ensuring that they are appropriately evaluated. The evaluation will be on the efficacy and the kind of documentation that the computers would be able to perform to ensure that they operate within acceptable cost. The users of the most of the most clinical systems will comprise of the professionals within the hospital who will be deemed qualified to address the issues in line with their licensure, experience and clinical training (Cherry & Jacob, 2016). Almost all the use of the NI tools within the facility for patient care will be after adequate training and instruction.

Regulatory Requirements for NI at XYZ

There are various needs in the form of legal obligations for an effective implementation of NI in a facility of the status of XYZ Hospital. Some of the legal requirements include; the facility will have to ensure that they develop sound policies and procedures that will guide the use of the NI systems (Cherry & Jacob, 2016). The facility will also be expected to offer adequate training and re-training of the end-users of the NI Systems. There will also be a need to strictly emphasize on the patient’s safety as the number one priority in implementing the NI System as a means of patient care. The facility will also be required to establish a zero tolerance for the sharing of passwords or security keys that would enable unauthorized access to the informatics system. Therefore, when these and other regulatory obligations are violated, XYZ may end up facing many lawsuits.

Skills required to ensure Adherence to the Policy Requirements

Appropriate application of NI requires experience, education, and training. Indeed, quality implementation will only be met when the facility abides by such conditions. Inadequate preparation for the use of the NI systems at XYZ can be an irresistible invitation of catastrophe.

Impacts of Nurse Leaders in the Implementation of NI

Nursing Informatics (NI) is a key factor in achieving patient safety and confidentiality. Because of the in-depth engagement of the nurses in nursing informatics, their leaders are expected to be people who can influence reforms across the care system. Nursing leaders act as the bridge between the informatics that works towards transforming the patient care and the clinical practices within a facility (Remus & Kennedy, 2012). The roles of nursing informatics leadership will be to engage in the necessary transformation processes and be the bridge between the care delivery approaches into the clinical practice to facilitate the change process.

Conclusion

Nursing Informatics (NI) assist in supporting all the medical officers, the patients and other stakeholders in ensuring that there is quality patient care and achievement of desired outcomes within healthcare systems. The support is achieved by the use of NI’s structures and processes; therefore, the introduction of NI as a specialty seeks to address the levels of competency and quality of healthcare systems.

References

Ball, M. J., Douglas, J. V., Walker, P. H., DuLong, D., Gugerty, B., Hannah, K. J., & Troseth, M. R. (Eds.). (2011). Nursing Informatics: Where technology and caring meet. Springer Science & Business Media.

Cherry, B., & Jacob, S. R. (2016). Contemporary nursing informatics: Issues, trends, & management. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Melnyk, B. M., & Fineout-Overholt, E. (Eds.). (2011). Evidence-based practice in nursing & healthcare: A guide to best practice. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Remus, S., & Kennedy, M. A. (2012). Innovation in transformative nursing leadership: nursing informatics competencies and roles. Nursing Leadership (Toronto, Ont.), 25(4), 14-26.