Question

• How is information technology important for the success of an organization? How will you utilize it as a nurse leader?

Answer 1

Information technology and digital development has made data collection easier in health care sector. And, health care professionals, who after completing their degree like doctorate can get themselves involved with the new techniques through technology, so that they can provide lot more services with increased efficiency. New developed and developing technologies which are as follows help in receiving and storing medical information about every patients they take care,

• Medical codes: Every diagnosis, symptoms and medications can be reported and submitted as alphanumeric codes, which is as common as any medical professional can understand. Such development opened a new job called medical coders, which also made communication between professional within a single or multiple hospital organizations much more easier.
• Electronic health and medical records(EHR and EMR): Every person's medical history that is received after consulting, treatment or surgery is stored for further verification or for future use in the electronic form. It involves not only a single doctor's point of view, but also a patient's scan result, radiology results and if 2 or more doctors get involved then theirs too.
• Online appointment: Through internet, medical appointments for consultation and scan schedule can be known, which helps both nurse and a patient. Patient scheduling is the main work for a nurse and through internet it is made easy for all. It is a part of tele-health, where a patient and doctor gets connected virtually and communicate to provide immediate services. The results of any laboratory after a test run on a patient's sample is now sent through mail, which cuts-off the patient's time towards traveling to a doctor's office or a hospital.

Nurse leaders and information technology:

a.Nurse leaders or nurse managers have a great role in helping nurses to maintain integrity among themselves and provide better health care services to any patient. After technology development, nurse leaders have an important role in imparting knowledge to fellow nurses about changing trends in digitalizing medical data and it's informatics.

b.Any nurse leaders should be able to adapt to new technology and help other nurses to learn about it to get better in receiving, storing and extracting data, for the benefit of patients. Nurse leaders should be able to use computers along with skills in communication through mail, able to use power point and spreadsheet application. And, he or she should be able to decode the medical codes or turn it into words for a patient to understand it.

c. TIGER is an association created by nurses at the year 2006, which helps in providing education about technology and excel their skills. At the most important quality of any nurse leader after understanding a technology is that he or she should help maintaining privacy about the medical history or data of a patient. Such that a nurse should adhere to principles and rules of security systems whether it's in digital or written form.