NR 541 Week 2 Assignment Interview with NI Practitioner - Nurse Specialist

INTERVIEW WITH INFORMATICS NURSE 2 SPECIALIST Interview with Informatics Nurse Specialist The informatics nurse specialists (INS) can take on many roles in healthcare. The American Nurses Association (ANA) in their 2015 Nursing Informatics: Scope and Standards of Practice, Second Edition has listed the current yet evolving functional areas for nursing informatics (NI). These areas include: administration, leadership, and management; systems analysis and design; compliance and integrity management; consultation; coordination, facilitation, and integration; development of systems, products, and resources; educational and professional development; genetics and genomics; information management/operational architecture; policy development and advocacy; quality and performance improvement; research and evaluation; and safety, security, and environmental health (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2018). An interview was performed via telephone with an informatics nurse specialist working under the title of Solutions Analyst for a large healthcare company that includes 23 hospitals, over 150 clinics and a medical group in the state of Utah (B.G., personal communication, March 15, 2019). Here, the results of the interview will be reported, along with an analysis as well as a discussion of insights gained. Interview Results An interview was conducted with an INS who has been working in the field for over five years. His clinical background was in acute care, intensive care unit (ICU) and oncology before entering the field of informatics. While his current title is Solutions Analyst, his position has evolved over the years, and he has held titles such as Computer Information Systems (CIS) Analyst and Informatics Analyst. When the specialty of nursing informatics was new to the organization he was under the umbrella of Information Technology (IT) as an Information Analysis While there are currently multiple NI functional areas, the specialty is a new and complex conglomerate of skills that assist in determining the roles of the INS. It appears that the roles of the INS, like many areas of nursing, contain much overlap. Technology is quickly evolving, and the roles of the INS are rapidly evolving with this. One example of this evolution is seen in the role of B.G. who began his informatics career under the umbrella of IT and then transitioned back into nursing as the role was developed. There are large amounts of data (“Big Data”) that are being directly incorporated into electronic health records (EHRs), and this is one of the areas of focus for the INS (Nagle, Sermeus, & Junger, 2017). During the interview, the use of big data was substantiated as B.G. reported that one of his primary functions is in determining how data should be reported and which areas need development. The functional areas in which the interviewed INS do not always follow the published descriptions of practice as the practice of informatics often involves several functional areas at once (ANA, 2015). The ANA (2015) describes the function of systems analysis and design as to analyze data to obtain knowledge, advance the science, inform decisions and provide reimbursement support (ANA, 2015, p. 21). This fits with some of the primary functions of B.G.’s most current project