Informatics Midterm Review Sheet
1. General principles of Nursing Informatics:
2. Knowledge
o Awareness and understanding of a set of informat
... [Show More] ion and ways that information can be made useful to support a specific task or arrive at a decision. This knowledge building is an ongoing process engaged in while a person is conscious and going about his or her normal daily activities.
3. Wisdom:
• Knowledge applied in a practical way or translated into actions; the use of knowledge and experience to heighten common sense and insight so as to exercise sound judgment in practical matters. Sometimes thought of as the highest form of common sense, resulting from accumulated knowledge or erudition (deep, thorough learning) or enlightenment (education that results in understanding and the dissemination of knowledge). Wisdom is the ability to apply valuable and viable knowledge, experience, understanding, and insight while being prudent and sensible. It is focused on our own minds; it is the synthesis of our experience, insight, understanding, and knowledge. Wisdom is the appropriate use of knowledge to solve human problems. It is knowing when and how to apply knowledge.
4. Scientific Underpinning:
• The scientific underpinnings of practice provide the basis of knowledge for advanced nursing practice.
These scientific underpinnings include sciences such as biology, physiology, psychology, ethics, and nursing.
• Nursing science, information science, and computer science
5. The Foundation of Knowledge Model
• The Foundation of Knowledge model is also introduced as the organizing conceptual framework of this text, and the model is tied to nursing science and the practice of nursing
informatics.
6. Computer science:
o Branch of engineering (application of science) that studies the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. The study of storage/memory, conversion and transformation, and transfer or transmission of information in machines— that is, computers—through both algorithms and practical implementation problems. Algorithms are detailed, unambiguous action sequences in the design, efficiency, and application of computer systems, whereas practical implementation problems deal with the software and hardware.
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7. Cognitive science:
o Interdisciplinary field that studies the mind, intelligence, and behavior from an information processing perspective.
8. Information science
o Information science enables the processing of information. This processing links people and technology. Humans are organic ISs, constantly acquiring, processing, and generating information or knowledge in their professional and personal lives. This high degree of knowledge, in fact, characterizes humans as extremely intelligent organic machines. The premise of this text revolves around this concept, and the text is organized on the basis of the Foundation of Knowledge model: knowledge acquisition,
knowledge processing, knowledge generation, and knowledge dissemination.
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9. Standard Terminology:
o Standardized terminologies (STs) contribute to the development of knowledge because they ensure that all professionals share the same understanding or meaning of a given concept, to clarify communication, facilitate research, and provide structure for decision support tools and EHRs. As you look at the Foundation of Knowledge model, STs support knowledge acquisition, dissemination, generation, and processing.
o STs are structured, controlled languages developed to represent concepts in a given domain in a clear, unambiguous fashion that conveys the exact same meaning for data, information, and knowledge across settings, regions, and even different countries. This consistency affords access to information and knowledge when it is needed without regard to the current model or period of care. STs are key to the development of an EHR in order to represent, communicate, exchange, reuse, and report data, information, and knowledge, including Meaningful Use criteria (Matney & Lundberg, 2013).
10. Informatics Competencies:
• A set of essential skills related to informatics deemed appropriate for various levels of nursing practice.
• One challenge that has been identified in the literature and continues to plague health care is the vast differences in
computer literacy and information management skills that healthcare workers possess (Gassert, 2008; McNeil, Elfrink, Beyea, Pierce, & Bickford, 2006; Topkaya & Kaya, 2014). Gassert (2008) felt that new graduates were not adequately literate. Barton (2005) believed that new nurses should have the following critical skills: use e-mail, operate Windows applications, search databases, and know how to work with the institution-specific nursing software used for charting and medication administration. These skills should not be limited to just new nurses, but instead should be required of all nurses and healthcare workers.
• Staggers, Gassert, and Curran (2001) advocated that nursing students and practicing nurses should be educated on core NI competencies. Although information technology
and informatics concepts certainly need to be incorporated into nursing school curricula, progress in this area has been
slow. In the 1980s, a nursing group of the International Medical Informatics Association convened to develop the first level of nursing competencies. While developing these competencies, the nursing group found that nurses fell in to one of the following three categories: (1) user, (2) developer, or (3) expert. These categories have since been expanded.
• Staggers and colleagues (2001) decided that the NI competencies developed in the 1980s were inadequate
and needed to be updated. These authors reviewed 35 NI competency articles and 14 job descriptions, which resulted in 1,159 items that were sorted into three broad categories: (1) computer skills, (2) informatics knowledge, and (3) informatics skills. These items were then placed in a database, where redundant items were removed. When this process was completed, 313 items remained.
• When these items were then further subdivided, Staggers and colleagues, along with the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) work group, realized that
these competencies were not universal to all nurses; thus, before it could be determined if the competency was an NI competency, nursing skill levels needed to be defined. The group determined that practicing nurses could be classified into four categories: (1) beginning nurse, (2) experienced nurse, (3) informatics nurse specialist, and
(4) informatics innovator. Each of these skill levels needed to be defined before Staggers and colleagues (2001) could determine which level was the most appropriate for that skill set. Table 7-1 provides the definition criteria for each skill level. Once the levels were defined, the group determined that 305 items were NI competencies and placed them into appropriate categories.
11. Information literacy:
• Ability to identify when information is needed as well as the skills to find, evaluate, and effectively use the same.
• Evaluation of online resources for quality
• Ability to search literature databases effectively
12. Health literacy:
• The acquisition of knowledge that promotes the ability to understand and to manage one’s health.
13. Meaningful Use
• The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 specifies three main components of meaningful use: (1) the use of a certified electronic health record (EHR) in a meaningful manner, such as e-prescribing; (2) the use of certified EHR technology for electronic exchange of health information to improve quality of health care; and (3) the use of certified EHR technology to submit clinical quality and other measures. The criteria for meaningful use will be staged in three steps. Stage 1 (2011–2012) set the baseline for electronic data capture and information sharing. Stage 2 (2013) and Stage 3 (expected to be implemented in 2015) continue to expand on this baseline and be developed through future rule making.
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