One of the greatest impacts many of us hope to achieve in our careers is a meaningful impact on care delivery, healthcare outcomes, and healthcare innovation.  In the last part of our series, our nurses talk about how nurse informaticist is evolving healthcare IT.

Mildred: Nurses are a crucial part of the documentation in healthcare. As a result of an EHR greatly impacts their ability to provide safe and effective care. I keep my clinical experience in mind, good and bad, as they are what drive me in everything I do. Tasks may become mundane, but I know at the end of the day, what we (nurse informaticists) create should help make care delivery safer, more efficient, and more effective.

Carol: In lots of ways. Much like in the delivery of healthcare, informatics nurses are often good at a number of different things: understanding the big picture, teaching, communicating, planning and managing their own work and the work of others, “cranking out the work” of helping build systems or analyze data, asking the right questions to solve a problem – all while keeping the patient at the forefront of what we do. Having these skills and being able to apply them in many different contexts is what makes nurses effective in informatics just like in the other areas where we work.

Innovation is about understanding a problem, envisioning a better way, and having the willingness to make that vision real, either in small, incremental ways or in bold, disruptive ways. Both kinds of evolution are valuable, and nurses are great at both.

Kasey: Nurses are often referred to as “the backbone of healthcare.” We see all aspects of patient care in a clinical setting and often must bridge all of those together to do what is best for the patient. The same is true in healthcare informatics. Nurses not only have the education to translate healthcare terms and phrases but the critical thinking skills to solve complex problems. Clinical Architecture does a great job of empowering nurses to solve problems not just concerning clinical content but have a voice in other product solutions. Nursing informatics as a specialty is in its infancy and I am excited to continue to be a part of its future as it is critical to the success of healthcare informatics.

Nichole:  Nurse informaticists are becoming a vital part of healthcare IT and have the unique opportunity to utilize their clinical knowledge and experience to better healthcare IT. The goal of many nurse informaticists is to help improve patient care and now more than ever nurses are given an opportunity to directly contribute to this goal through their involvement in healthcare IT.