The Role of Nursing Informatics in Health Care
The Informatics system at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (CCF) plays an essential role in supporting the delivery of quality patient care and to improve patient satisfaction, features that are very important to maintain the “Magnet Status” achieved by the Clinic. As the CCF mission statement highlights, the goal of the Clinic is to support nursing care and achieve good outcomes along with patient satisfaction. This goal was reached by creating an informatics system that allows an easy access to data information, ensures easy communication between health care providers and promotes nursing and patient education. The mission of CCF is “to support evidence-based nursing practice and improved patient outcomes with technology solutions that enhance nursing communication, documentation and efficiency” ( Nursing Informatics: Nursing past, present and future section, para. 1).The Role of Nursing Informatics in Health Care
Cleveland Clinics Nursing Informatics implemented an electronic medical record system, called Epic System that is using high technology and considers professional and clinical experience to manage the patient’s information, to improve work, and to deliver higher quality health care for its clients. Nurses and Physicians have easy access to the system, being able to view data and collect necessary information, provide quality client care and document the patient’s condition. health care professionals can document through the electronic medical record system the medical care that was provided to the patients and the patient’s responses to the care given. The Epic System is used not only by nursing professionals, but by a large variety of allied health care departments, too. For example respiratory therapists can document aerosol treatments administered to their patients, adjustments in ventilator settings and the patient’s response to these interventions. The pharmacy department uses the information system to access patient’s data such as medical reconciliation, medications profile, including current and home medications , demographics, health history and medical diagnosis. In this way it will beThe Role of Nursing Informatics in Health Care
reducing significantly medication errors. The physicians consider Epic System to be very useful for them, because allows them to easily find their patients file in the system, allowing access to the patient’s prior doctor’s visits and health information, laboratory results, radiology test results as well as interdisciplinary consult results and recommendations. The physician’s orders for medications and treatments can be easily entered into the system through the computerized physician order entry feature of the system (CPOE). This has high significance in reducing medication errors and in delivering care in a timely manner. The CCF website presents a clear explanation about the Informatics system’s role in obtaining and maintaining the high standard achieved by the clinic: