THE IMPACT OF NURSING INFORMATICS ON PATIENT OUTCOMES AND PATIENT CARE EFFICIENCIES
The Impact OF Nursing Informatics on Patient Outcomes and Patient Care Efficiencies
In addition to care quality and safety, care efficiency and improved patient outcomes have become critical measuring facets describing effective and successful care delivery practices in healthcare settings today. Technology has become indispensable in the healthcare sector. Nursing informatics has equally become critical in fostering a smooth adoption and integration of health information technology (IT) tools and projects into care delivery and operations. According to McGonigle & Mastrian (2022), the application of nursing informatics fosters the integration of data, IT, information, and knowledge to support nurses, clinicians, patients, and other users to make better decisions regarding how patients’ needs are addressed. Technology-based projects have been adopted in care delivery and nursing practices to improve efficiency and outcomes. This paper proposes a nursing informatics project to improve patient outcomes or care efficiency.
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Project Description (Patient Queue Management)
Patient experience in hospitals greatly determines their overall care outcomes. The adoption of queue management systems would reduce actual and perceived waiting times, increasing care effectiveness, efficiency, and ability to meet desired patient outcomes. According to Mosier et al. (2019), effective patient management practices increase an organization’s operational efficiency and service quality by reducing waiting times and meeting the desired outcomes and care efficiency. Adopting a queue management system would provide actual time queue status and display, notification to care providers on patient flow, status checking, virtual queue, and appointment booking, and can also be integrated with other systems to provide priority for cases such as emergency, elderly, pregnant, and disabled. When visiting healthcare facilities, patients are sometimes stressed, in pain and discomfort; hence their main focus is to find the best and most comforting care environment possible (Sipes, 2016). Not only does the queue management system help improve the patient experience, but also a resourceful approach to staff and clinicians management. The project would improve patient experience, care efficiency, and staff productivity. The adoption of a queue management system would help manage appointments for in and out-patients as well as help in reducing patients’ waiting time.
Stakeholders Impacted By This Project
Interprofessional and teamwork have become critical to effective healthcare performance and safe and quality care. Regarding the proposed project, different stakeholders will be impacted by the implementation. These include patients, nurses and other care providers, nurse informatics and IT experts, organization leaders, and the administration. Patients would be the primary consumers and beneficiaries of the proposed project. The system would enable them to schedule and reschedule doctor appointments and virtually follow up on the traffic at the hospital, hence visiting at their best and most convenient times. According to Ng et al. (2018), patients are satisfied with the healthcare environment where they are served as soon as they enter the care facility. The utilization of patient queue management systems improves patient experience, allowing their needs to be addressed timely hence better outcomes.
In addition to patients, the IT and nursing informatics experts are critical stakeholders in the proposed project. The project will be founded on IT knowledge, tools, and skills; hence the IT expert’s input will be indispensable. The stakeholders will ensure the system meets the required application and organizational needs. According to Bidari et al. (2021), information technology has become a requisite in today’s healthcare industry. Hence it is an indispensable aspect of the proposed project. In addition to developing and implementing the project, the team would help maintain other systems and related technologies. The project would allow the team to flex their skills and IT knowledge, provide an opportunity to influence patient experience positively, and improve patient outcomes and care efficiency.
The leader and the organizational administrators will collaboratively provide relevant financial support to the proposed project and approve its implementation. Their input would be to evaluate the overall benefit of the proposed project and eventually approve it, providing relevant support, including authority, end users, and the end product of the system. More so, they will communicate the incoming change to the rest of the workers, creating a positive change environment for the incoming project. Finally, the nurses and other care providers work in the healthcare organization. The care providers would be critical users and beneficiaries of the project regarding patient management. They will actively utilize the system for scheduling patient visits and incoming traffic, preparing for probable busy periods such as emergencies. The care providers’ input would include implementors and evaluators, ensuring the system meets the patient’s needs and the worker’s and organizational needs concerning care delivery.
Patient Outcome or Patient-Care Efficiencies This Project is Aimed at Improving
A patient queue management system would result in various benefits to care delivery and patient experience. The project, once implemented, would improve or aid in enhancing patient experience raising their satisfaction levels and hence better care outcomes. According to McGonigle & Mastrian (2022), improving patient experience and care providers’ satisfaction overall improves healthcare organization performance in meeting patient needs. Adopting the proposed project would mean an enhanced patient experience and increased satisfaction hence a better care experience. On the other hand, the system would ensure that patients effectively schedule their appointments as it allows for effective time management and prompt service delivery, hence a positive patient experience and outcomes. Finally, the system would be critical in building steady nurse or care provider management. The leaders would be able to monitor what time there would be high patient traffic which would mean more care providers would be set to serve the patients. The system would allow for prior arrangement of the care providers hence a positive experience for the patients.
Technologies Required in The Proposed Project
Different technologies will be critical to the implementation of the proposed project. These include a patient flow management system database, a computer network, and patient or end-user interfaces such as an app, website, or messaging platform. The website or the app will provide patients with an easily accessible platform to check on the current queue in their hospital and how much time they are expected to undertake. Through the computer systems, the website will allow the clinicians to track the patient traffic and prepare for the incoming number by allocating enough care providers. Multiple display screens will also be utilized, indicating patient ticket and their position in the queue. The computer system and the database will provide the foundation of the project on which the queue management trend will be based. The care providers will constantly monitor data and patient virtue queues to understand the critical cases pending hence allocating more workers and, in turn, waiting time reduced.
Project Team By Roles
The project’s success will be based on the team’s ability to implement the proposed change collaboratively. The team comprises a team or project leader, nurse informaticists and IT experts, nurses, clinicians, and patients. Sipes (2016) identified that, while change is inevitable in the modern day, effective change management in a healthcare setting is based on the ability of the change-implementing team to work together effectively towards a common goal or objective. The team or project leader will be responsible for overall project facets, including setting goals, communicating, updating the administrators, developing a timeline, and providing critical updates to all stakeholders and team members. On the other hand, nurse informaticists and IT experts will be responsible for applying IT knowledge and skills to develop the required system functionalities. They will actively ensure the system meets organizational and patient needs regarding care delivery, cost saving, care safety, and efficiency. Finally, the nurses, other care providers, and patients are end users of the proposed system/project. In addition to being users, they will be the source of feedback and evaluation to ensure the project meets the set goals and objectives.
References
Bidari, A., Jafarnejad, S., & Alaei Faradonbeh, N. (2021). Effect of Queue management system on patient satisfaction in emergency department: A randomized controlled trial. Archives of Academic Emergency Medicine, 9(1), E59. https://doi.org/10.22037/aaem.v9i1.1335
McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2022). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (5th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Mosier, S., Roberts, W. D., & Englebright, J. (2019). A systems-level method for developing nursing informatics solutions. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 49(11), 543-548. https://doi.org/10.1097/NNA.0000000000000815
Ng, Y. C., Alexander, S., & Frith, K. H. (2018). Integration of mobile health applications in health information technology initiatives: Expanding opportunities for nurse participation in population health. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 36(5), 209-213. https://doi.org/10.1097/CIN.0000000000000445
Sipes, C. (2016). Project management: Essential skill of nurse informaticists. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 225, 252-256.
THE IMPACT OF NURSING INFORMATICS ON PATIENT OUTCOMES AND PATIENT CARE EFFICIENCIES
In the Discussion for this module, you considered the interaction of nurse informaticists with other specialists to ensure successful care. How is that success determined?
Patient outcomes and the fulfillment of care goals is one of the major ways that healthcare success is measured. Measuring patient outcomes results in the generation of data that can be used to improve results. Nursing informatics can have a significant part in this process and can help to improve outcomes by improving processes, identifying at-risk patients, and enhancing efficiency.
RESOURCES
Be sure to review the Learning Resources before completing this activity.
Click the weekly resources link to access the resources.
WEEKLY RESOURCES
To Prepare:
Review the concepts of technology application as presented in the Resources.
Reflect on how emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence may help fortify nursing informatics as a specialty by leading to increased impact on patient outcomes or patient care efficiencies.
The Assignment: (4-5 pages not including the title and reference page)
In a 4- to 5-page THE IMPACT OF NURSING INFORMATICS ON PATIENT OUTCOMES AND PATIENT CARE EFFICIENCIES project proposal written to the leadership of your healthcare organization, propose a nursing informatics project for your organization that you advocate to improve patient outcomes or patient-care efficiency. Your project proposal should include the following:
Describe the project you propose.
Identify the stakeholders impacted by this project.
Explain the patient outcome(s) or patient-care efficiencies this project is aimed at improving and explain how this improvement would occur. Be specific and provide examples.
Identify the technologies required to implement this project and explain why.
Identify the project team (by roles) and explain how you would incorporate the nurse informaticist in the project team.
Use APA format and include a title page and reference page.
Use the Safe Assign Drafts to check your match percentage before submitting your THE IMPACT OF NURSING INFORMATICS ON PATIENT OUTCOMES AND PATIENT CARE EFFICIENCIES work.
