Factors of nursing knowledge on health care informatics

The Language of Nursing

An important part of this technique approach to technologically enhanced nursing care is the development of universal nursing data languages. The most prominent of these is the International Classification of Nursing Practice (ICNP) being developed by the International Council of Nurses (ICN). “The purpose of the ICNP is to provide a tool for describing and documenting key elements that represent clinical nursing practice”

It is important then, for nurses to become critically aware of how and why they are using computers in nursing care, and that they become knowledgeable and skilled enough to influence the way nursing care becomes digitized. “The nation is at a tipping point in applying enabling technologies to healthcare. With the push coming from the federal government and all corners of the field, this is indeed a far-reaching revolution. The time has come for healthcare to leave the manual tools of the past in the past and turn to the enablers of the 21st century. The nursing profession is being transformed to meet the needs of the new world and will be a major player in the revolution”

Information processing has been a vital part of nursing, far longer than the availability of computers and ICTs. “Information processing and communication are centrally involved in virtually all health care activities, including obtaining and recording information about patients; communication among health care professionals; accessing medical literature; selecting diagnostic procedures; interpreting laboratory results; and collecting clinical research data” ).

ICT advancement has made it possible to utilize technology to quicken all of these activities, to access a digitally stored pool of literature, statistics, and research data to assist in decisions, and provide a language for nurses to use to record and plan individual client care. 

Point to Ponder:

 "Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination." Albert Einstein