Fast Facts in Health Informatics for Nurses

by Lynda R Hardy PhD, RN, FAAN

Overview

“Provides a broad overview of informatics knowledge to empower nurses to be thoughtful and participate in the capture, storage, and use of data to create information and knowledge to optimize patient outcomes…In this book, you will gain an understanding of how clinical decision support tools work so you can provide feedback about [their] effectiveness and recommend additional ways decision support tools help.”

—Bonnie L. Westra, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, FACMI, From the Foreword

Understanding and managing technology is a key component in providing quality patient care today. This addition to the popular Fast Facts series provides RNs and nursing students with an accessible, concise, step-by-step introduction to the essentials of informatics and its impact on patient lives. This book delivers required competencies and frameworks for both nursing education and practice, expanding upon integral systems and technologies within our healthcare system and their impact on the responsibilities of the individual nurse.

Highlighting the intricacies within a specialized approach to healthcare data, data mining, and data organization, this resource connects day-to-day informatics practices to larger initiatives and perspectives. Clear and concise synopses of healthcare essentials, case studies, and abundant practical examples help readers understand how health informatics improves patient care within the nursing scope of practice. Thought-provoking questions in each chapter facilitate in-depth considerations on chapter content.

Key Features:
• Key information about the electronic health record, telehealth, wearables, and decision-support tools
• Practical examples demonstrate how informatics improves patient care within the nurse’s scope of practice
• Case studies with thought-provoking questions
• Nurses’ influence on data quality
• Relevant ethical, legal, and social issues
• The intersection of technology and informatics and the power of data

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826142269
Publisher:	Springer Publishing Company
Publication date:	10/18/2019
Series:	Fast Facts
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	244
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Lynda R. Hardy, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, is an associate professor of clinical practice at the Ohio State University College of Nursing and affiliate faculty at the Translational Data and Analytics Institute.

Table of Contents

Contributors

Foreword Bonnie L. Westra, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, FACMI

Preface

1. Informatics and Why It Matters

Lynda R. Hardy and Ann Deerhake

2. Informatics Frameworks and Competencies: What a Nurse Needs to Know

Carolyn Sipes and Lynda R. Hardy

3. The Power of Data

Rebecca Freeman and Helen Hill

4. Technology and Informatics

Tami H. Wyatt and Xueping Li

5. Getting Familiar With the Architecture: Computing Systems, Networks, and Data Security

Lisa M. Blair

6. The Electronic Health Record, Electronic Medical Record, and Personal Health Record

Angela Wilson-VanMeter and Laurel Courtney

7. Decision Support in the Age of Precision Health

Lisa M. Blair

8. Informatics and the Floor Nurse

Laurel Courtney and Judith Moore

9. Digital Health: mHealth, Telehealth, and Wearables

Rebecca S. Koszalinski, Marjorie M. Kelley, and Tara R. O’Brien

10. Ethical, Legal, and Regulatory Issues

Carolyn Sipes and Lynda R. Hardy

11. The User Experience

Paula Smailes and Marjorie M. Kelley

Index

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Karen O'Grady, MLIS, MAEd (University of San Diego)
Description: This book presents a general overview of health informatics for nurses. It defines health informatics, provides examples of its use in health care today, and discusses the benefits, drawbacks, barriers to use, creation, implementation, legislation, institutional support, ethics, and nursing education and utilization of health informatics. Each chapter begins with a case study/description of a patient or nursing situation that is explained and resolved by the end of the chapter. The book includes basic, often mediocre graphic illustrations, several bulleted lists, and an index but no glossary.
Purpose: The first two sentences of the preface perfectly answer this question. They say: "This book was written to provide at a time when big data and health-related data analytics seem to catch the front page for understanding healthcare. It is a basic understanding - a primer - for noninformatics nurses who wish to know more about data and how those data affect healthcare." Although vague, these do seem like worthy objectives. An introduction to health informatics for nurses is needed. However, in my opinion, this book is not needed because it attempts to meet its objectives with a generic repeating of obvious concepts.
Audience: Several times the book says, "As a new nurse, you will..." Therefore, the book seems to be directed toward undergraduate nursing students. Terms related to informatics such as information technology, competencies, wisdom, and quality are defined; however, many medical terms that may be unfamiliar to some nurses are not (e.g., trastuzumab, intubated, Plavix, afebrile, oximetry, "intravenous push adriamycin and cyclophosphamide infusion"). The book is said to target "noninformatics nurses." I would add, "who have no experience with technology in health care." Most of the authors are nursing professors from the Ohio State University or the University of Tennessee. Many have PhDs. Lynda R. Hardy, the main author, has published a few articles and appears to have been involved in healthcare informatics from the beginning of this new field.
Features: The best aspect of this book is that it looks very professionally done. However, in my opinion, it is poorly written, inconsistent, and elementary for the audience. For example, a sentence in the preface reads: "Our group grew, and we realized the need for greater nursing education related to understanding and standardizing the language and concepts we used in patient care and the need to work toward nursing education to begin teaching students, from the baccalaureate level up, about the importance and use of data." A sentence in chapter 1 uses informal language, stating, "We are all teachers and learners when it relates to information technology. Pay attention, grasshopper!" Each chapter begins with a feature called "Consider this!" where a scenario in italics is presented, but there is no consistency in the feature from chapter to chapter. Some are nursing scenarios, some are patient case studies, while one is an author speaking in the first person about her experience as a patient. Some chapters conclude with a "Consider this!" resolution to the issue in italics, some resolve the issue in the chapter summary, and some never mention it again. The "Fast Fact Bytes" feature presents a variety of facts throughout the book, but again with no consistency in their nature. These "facts" are serious no-brainers. Examples include a bulleted list of IT security procedures, which states, "Avoid visiting potentially risky websites from work computers," and "Never send unencrypted patient data over an unsecured network." Other "Fast Fact Bytes" are "Digital technologies transcend time and geography delivering the right care, at the right time, in the right place," and "Telehealth is the use of electronic information and telecommunication technologies to support long-distance care, patient and professional health-related education, public health, and health administration." This book is supposed to be an overview of health informatics, but in my opinion, it never makes it past ultra-generic "facts" like these. Readers seeking to learn something about health informatics will see that it is nothing but technology basics and healthcare basics that most undergraduate students who have ever been a patient in any capacity in 21st century America would already know.
Assessment: As someone with only basic knowledge of healthcare/nursing informatics, I hoped this book would give me an overview of the field. Unfortunately, I did not learn one new thing from this book that I didn't already know. I found it poorly written, inconsistent, and redundant. The chapters do not build logically upon each other. Each chapter defines healthcare informatics again; each chapter lists the benefits of healthcare informatics; obvious terms are defined or explained again and again, while terms I am not familiar with are not. The citing of references seems very inconsistent, with some things cited that don't need to be while other facts are not cited at all. The book reads like an undergraduate research paper that would earn a B.

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