Informatics

Nursing Informatics and its Relation to the Electronic Health Record

Nursing Informatics and its Relation to the Electronic Health Record

As the years have passed much advancements have been made, many of which have taken place in the world of technology. Technology has expanded past being used for social and research purposes and has partaken its role in the medical industry. In the medical field, technology has been implemented in various ways, one of them being nursing informatics, which is, “the specialty that integrates nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage and communicate information, data, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice” (Bailey, 2006, p. 25). Nursing informatics encompasses various areas of science to incorporate all of them into the nursing practice, it is also very well divided into different types and forms, one those types being the electronic health record (EHR). Murphy (2010) describes that EHR’s are a digital version of a patient’s record and that they are patient-centered records which improve the availability of a patient’s information. EHR’s make it easier to view a patient’s information, and even though not all medical facilities have adopted an EHR system, a majority of them have. This paper will provide further information regarding electronic health records and how it intertwines with nursing informatics.

Explanation of my Interest

I recently began a new journey in my life, where I enrolled into a program to get my Bachelors of Science in Nursing (BSN), and as a graduation requirement I have to take a Nursing Informatics course. At a first approach I was clueless as to what nursing informatics was, similarly I had no idea what an EHR was either. I’m not one who is very fond of technology given that I only know basic things and once it gets more complicated my brain shuts on me and I don’t know what to do. So, at the beginning I thought I wouldn’t be a fan of nursing informatics, but that was...