What is Nursing Informatics?
Nursing informatics (NI) is the specialty that integrates nursing science with multiple information management and analytical sciences to identify, define, manage, and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice. NI supports nurses, consumers, patients, and the interprofessional healthcare team.
Nursing Informatics: Scope and Standards of Practice, 2nd Edition, ANA 2015
What does that mean in layman terms?
The major focus of nursing informatics is documentation. Other duties include implementing electronic health records (EHR) in hospitals, physician offices and clinics, designing and training others in the use of the EHRs, developing policies in organizations and analyzing and managing outcomes. One of the greatest contributions made to patient safety by nurses is in the documentation of the care in the EHR.
Since 1993
How can Nursing Informatics help attorneys win cases?
As a board certified (BC) informatics nurse, this specialized certification has prepared Sharon to easily understand and navigate the electronic medical record (EMR). It has also prepared her to understand and interpret audit logs/trails. Audit logs/trails are more than just the patients medical record, it is a time stamp of which health care providers accessed a patient chart, the entries they documented or deleted as well as the length of time they spent in the chart and even if they accessed the chart without making an entry or modification. Audit logs/trails can help bolster or refute a claim that procedures or interventions were performed at the times the health care provider states they were performed. As more healthcare facilities utilize EMR's, interpreting audit logs/trails by Legal Nurse Consultants will become more important in litigation to assist attorney's in winning cases.
