How did you use feedback, and what was the effect of the feedback on the foundation of your knowledge?
History and Evolution of Nursing Informatics
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The Future The future landscape is yet to be fully understood, as technology continues to evolve with a rapidity and unfolding that is rich with promise and potential peril. Box 6-3 helps us to imagine what future practice might entail. It is anticipated that computing power will be capable of aggregating and transforming additional multidimensional data and information sources (e.g., historical, multisensory, experiential, and genetic sources) into CIS. With the availability of such rich repositories, further opportunities will open up to enhance the training of health professionals, advance the design and application of CDSs, deliver care that is informed by the most current evidence, and engage with individuals and families in ways yet unimagined.
The basic education of all health professions will evolve over the next decade to incorporate core informatics competencies. In general, the clinical care environments will be connected, and information will be integrated across disciplines to the benefit of care providers and citizens alike. The future of health care will be highly dependent on the use of CISs and CDSs to achieve the global aspiration of safer, quality care for all citizens.
The ideal is a nursing practice that has wholly integrated informatics and nursing education and that is driven by the use of information and knowledge from a myriad of sources, creating practitioners whose way of being is grounded in informatics. Nursing research is dynamic and an enterprise in which all nurses are engaged by virtue of their use of technologies to gather and analyze findings that inform specific clinical situations. In every practice setting, the contributions of nurses to health and well-being of citizens will be highly respected and parallel, if not exceed, the preemi- nence granted physicians.
Summary In this chapter, we have traced the development of informatics as a specialty, defined nursing informatics, and explored the DIKW paradigm central to informatics. We also explored the need for and the development of standardized terminologies to capture and codify the work of nursing and how informatics supports the knowledge work of nursing. This chapter advanced the view that every nurse’s practice will make contributions to new nursing knowledge in dynamically interactive CIS environ- ments. The core concepts associated with informatics will become embedded in the practice of every nurse, whether administrator, researcher, educator, or practitioner. Informatics will be prominent in the knowledge work of nurses, yet it will be a sub- tlety because of its eventual fulsome integration with clinical care processes. Clinical care will be substantially supported by the capacity and promise of technology today and tomorrow.
Most importantly, readers need to contemplate a future without being limited by the world of practice as it is known today. Information technology is not a panacea for all of the challenges found in health care, but it will provide the nursing profes- sion with an unprecedented capacity to generate and disseminate new knowledge at rapid speed. Realizing these possibilities necessitates that all nurses understand and leverage the informatician within and contribute to the future.
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This text is designed to include the necessary content to prepare nurses for prac- tice in the ever-changing and technology-laden healthcare environments. Informatics competence has been recognized as necessary in order to enhance clinical decision making and improve patient care for many years. This is evidenced by Goossen (2000), who reflected on the need for research in this area and believed that the focus of nursing informatics research should be on the structuring and processing of patient information and the ways that these endeavors inform nursing decision mak- ing in clinical practice. The increased use of technology to enhance nursing practice, nursing education, and nursing research will open new avenues for acquiring, pro- cessing, generating, and disseminating knowledge.
In the future, nursing research will make significant contributions to the devel- opment of nursing science. Technologies and translational research will abound, and clinical practices will continue to be evidence based, thereby improving patient outcomes and decreasing safety concerns. Schools of nursing will embrace nursing science as they strive to meet the needs of changing student populations and the increasing complexity of healthcare environments.
Summary Nursing science influences all areas of nursing practice. This chapter provided an overview of nursing science and considered how nursing science relates to typical nursing practice roles, nursing education, informatics, and nursing research. The Foundation of Knowledge model was introduced as the organizing conceptual framework for this text. Finally, the relationship of nursing science to nursing informatics was discussed. In subsequent chapters the reader will learn more about how nursing informatics supports nurses in their many and varied roles. In an ideal world, nurses would embrace nursing science as knowledge users, knowledge managers, knowledge developers, knowledge engineers, and knowl- edge workers.
ThOUGhT-prOVOKING QUeSTIONS
1. Imagine you are in a social situation and someone asks you, “What does a nurse do?” Think about how you will capture and convey the richness that is nursing science in your answer.
2. Choose a clinical scenario from your recent experience and analyze it using the Foundation of Knowledge model. How did you acquire knowledge? How did you process knowledge? How did you generate knowledge? How did you dis- seminate knowledge? How did you use feedback, and what was the effect of the feedback on the foundation of your knowledge?