NR361 Information Systems in Healthcare

Criteria 

Fill in the answers in this column.

Demographics: Provide initials of the RN, official job title of interviewee that includes the type of nursing information role and the date the interview was conducted. 

RN Initials: CAHIMS, CPHIMS, CHCIO

Job Title: Hospital Chief Information Officer

Date of Interview: August 13, 2018

Required Questions

(answer EVERY question in this section)

1. Describe your career path to your current position. Include information about education and experiences.

The interviewee was very eager to describe her career path to me. First, she responded that becoming a hospital information officer (CIO) was a huge turning point in her life. She claimed that as a child she dreamed of becoming a professional ballet dancer until she uncovered her passion for education. The interviewee attended college in Florida where she studied BSC. Construction Engineering. According to her, she enjoyed the programming lessons more than constructing buildings and passages. After graduating with a degree in engineering, she went back to college to study computer science. She worked as a part-timer for a local healthcare software vendor where she gained four years of experience in the development of custom ERP solutions. According to the interviewee, after obtaining her second degree, she quit working for the local software company and secured a job with a public hospital in Chicago. There, she was appointed a senior project manager, a position she served diligently. She oversaw some of the most successful and brilliant software innovations and high-tech fixings in the history of the institution. After two years at the hospital, she went back to college to pursue Masters in IT and graduated with full honors. She worked for two years at a city hospital as a Director of IT and Chief Technology Officer. At the same time, she attended and graduated from CHIME CIO boot camp and obtained her CHICO certification. A year later, the interviewee also achieved HIMSS certifications including CAHIMS and CPHIMS. She is currently the CIO for Sunrise Hospital Las Vegas.

2. Discuss the value of best evidence as a driving force in delivery of nursing care at your facility.

The interviewee stated that evidence-based practice is significant to nursing care delivery because it facilitates the provision of the most effective care that is available. According to her, every hospital staff must ensure that patients access the most efficient care based on the best available evidence.  

3. What safeguards and decision-making support tools are embedded in patient care technologies and information systems that support safe practice at your facility?

The interviewee mentioned some safeguards and decision-making support tools employed by the hospital to aid in the enhancement of patient care and security. Firstly, the institution utilizes the technology involving the use of quick response (QR) codes to enable the staff to respond quickly and decisively during emergencies. The implementation of this tool requires that occupants close to the hospital feed personal data about their health status and medications into the hospital’s database and then place corresponding QR code stickers where medics can discover and scan them to retrieve useful information. The information obtained can be helpful in the event of an emergency. Besides, she also mentioned the use of computerized orders and decision support applications such as the Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) which aims to reduce medication errors and facilitate easy retrieval of patients past medical history. The interviewee also mentioned that the concept of computerized staff scheduling systems had enhanced the responsiveness of nurses to their duties.

4. Names/lists four or more technologies that improved patient care.

The interviewee said that there are many technologies employed by the hospital to improve patient care. She mentioned a few such as Smart beds, electronic health records, electronic lift systems, radio frequency identification, and silicon barcodes.

5. Names/lists three or more groups that rely on information/data AND describes in detail how information is utilized.

The interviewee listed the medical staff, hospital management and vendors as the three healthcare groups that depend on the information she collects. These groups utilize this information to develop a strategic and tactical plan necessary to evaluate and coordinate the hospital’s IT systems, as well as to facilitate communication between the relevant parties.

Optional Questions 

(answer only ONE question from the choices below)

1. Please tell me what challenges you have faced in dealing with other disciplines who may not “understand the needs of nurses/nursing?”

From the interviewee’s experience, the most dominant challenge she has faced include interpreting nursing informatics in its correct context to other disciplines within the hospital. Staff from other disciplines fail to understand that nursing informatics is an extension of nursing practice, and thus they end up not appreciating the roles of nurse informaticists. Mostly, it is the subordinate staff who do not understand the necessity of nurse informaticists and often act unprofessionally towards them. Some of these unprofessional behaviors include using aggressive rhetoric and acting insubordinately toward us.

2. Please share an example of how garbage in/garbage out (GIGO) impacted a decision related to your information/data collection.

3. Please give me an example of how the lack of interprofessional collaboration impacted your role.

4. Please describe what a typical day on the job is like for you?

Follow-up Questions

(Answer all of these. Please do not ask them during the interview. 

Instead, reflect and answer them afterward.)

1. How will completing this interview impact your practice as a BSN-prepared nurse? Give specific examples. 

Completing this interview will help to strengthen my profession because I have learned a lot throughout the process. During the discussion, I recognized the significance of incorporating new technology into the healthcare system. For example, the introduction of Smart beds has helped to reduce in-hospital accidental falls among patients by electronically reporting movements by the patients. The beds also enable easy access to the patients’ personal information including body mass and temperature through digital means rather than manually. 

2. Resources: 

List scholarly articles or texts that were used prior to the interview to prepare. Write resource in APA format. (The references should be within the last five years).

**Clearly states how each resource helped prepare for the interview.

Resource #1:

Nagle, L. M. (2015). The role of the informatics nurse. Introduction to nursing informatics (pp. 251-270). Springer, London.

How did this resource prepare you for the interview?

This resource helped me to gain fundamental conceptual background information regarding nursing informatics. Therefore, with this basic knowledge, I was able to identify the key areas to cover during the interview.

Resource # 2:

Liu, C. H., Lee, T. T., & Mills, M. E. (2015). The experience of informatics nurses in Taiwan. Journal of Professional Nursing, 31(2), 158-164.

How did this resource prepare you for the interview?

This resource assisted me to acquire knowledge concerning the challenges faced by nurse informaticists in dealing with other disciplines who may not be aware of the significance of the field to the health sector. Thus, I was able to compare these discrepancies with the responses of the interviewee and gauge their consistency and reliability.