An area in a nursing practice in which informatics is used in patient care. Advantages and disadvantages of using informatics in this scenario

An area in a nursing practice in which informatics is used in patient care. Advantages and disadvantages of using informatics in this scenario

As a rule, informatics is used in every area of nursing to address staffing issues and assign roles and responsibilities to nurses effectively, while transferring patient data carefully, especially during handovers. However, in some areas of nursing, informatics bears particularly significant functions, such as integrating nursing strategies with the opportunities that computer science provides for data management in pediatric nursing. In this context, data can be communicated through technology, which is very useful in the contexts such as patient handover.

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The incorporation of nursing informatics into pediatric care will allow reducing the amount of time that is usually taken to transfer the data otherwise. As a result, nurses can utilize their spare time to deliver appropriate nursing services faster and introduce critical interventions more effectively. The described change is instrumental in pediatric care, where the timeliness of the response toward a change in a patient’s health is especially crucial given the vulnerabilities of children. Therefore, time management issues should be treated as an important advantage of including nursing informatics in the management of pediatric care. It provides a [powerful tool in transferring data fast and avoiding the roadblocks on the way to delivering information and the corresponding services fast.

Unfortunately, the introduction of nursing informatics into the context of pediatric care also implies overcoming several disadvantages, one of which is linked directly to the development of nurse-patient communication. Since the pediatric nursing setting suggests that a significant amount of nurse-patient communication occurs with parents serving as mediators between a nurse and a patient, the efficacy of care may drop significantly. Without proper skills of utilizing respective tools for transferring patient data, controlling changes in a child, and reporting them to a nurse, parents will be unable to provide essential feedback, which is instrumental in addressing health concerns in outpatient settings. Likewise, in the hospital environment, retrieving data from a patient may be fraught with challenges due to their age and related limitations.

A computer application that can be used to guide evidence-based practice in nursing

Apart from serving as the tool for transferring data directly between nurses and patients, innovative technology and, particularly, computer applications, can be used to encourage evidence-based practice in nursing. Computer applications allow introducing the element of automation into the process of data management, thus making the process of detecting health issues in the target population faster. In this regard, one should mention the CDSS computer application as the tool that improves the quality of nursing practice substantially, providing additional opportunities for implementing evidence-based practice. The specified software introduces a system of knowledge sharing into the nursing context, improving the transfer of data and reducing the probability of losing an important piece of information along the way (Honaker et al., 2019). In its essence, the CDSS framework provides nurses with multiple options for receiving support in the course of clinical decision-making.

The introduction of CDSS has had impressive effects on the management of key nursing tasks and improving the efficacy of clinical care due to the focus on multidisciplinary work that it provides. Namely, the application contributes to data sharing and collaboration for making decisions and the relevant choices when administering corresponding nursing services to the target demographic (Hinderer et al., 2017). As a result, the solutions located by nursing experts embrace a large variety of factors that would have been overlooked otherwise (Honaker et al., 2019). The resulting connection between the observations, the existing knowledge system, and the effects produced by the administered interventions inform the further care and treatment choices, therefore, allowing nurses to incorporate multiple data pieces into the development of clinical advice.