Essay about Health Informatics

Submitted By carmineblue6598
Words: 445
Pages: 2

My first encounter with health informatics was in 1985 at my first job, in an urban hospital. Before the shift started, the secretary printed out everyone's assignment with all their patients, including their medications, treatments, PT/OT, and care plan. It was innovative at that time because it was the first hospital to generate computer forms. Fast forward to 2009 when computer charting was introduced in our department. The clinics and our department were the last group to integrate Epic computer charting.

Part of my frustration with our Epic system is that it constantly changed without warning. They failed to notify us when they upgraded the system, and when they changed the software for the EMR they expected you to be able to adapt and learn instantly. The software we used was not user friendly, and it frustrated many doctors and nurses. There were too many web pages we needed to sift through in order to find the page needed to chart. Nurses spent much of their time educating the doctors on how to access the various functions in the electronic chart, so they would not ask redundant questions. Although it has been a struggle the first year, the nursing service has reacted well to the new form of charting today.

Informatics has become possible through the advancement of computer technology. Graves and Corcoran (1989) defined informatics as a "combination of computer science, information science, and nursing science designed to assist in the management and processing of nursing data, information, and knowledge to support the practice of nursing and the delivery of nursing care".
Nurses can utilize the Epic to obtain information about something they do not fully understand. Test results, whether labs or radiology results can be easily viewed through the use of this technology. Orders being