Innovations in Nursing Informatics

[rninformatics, DNP, RN]

Too often, we hear about the challenges and failures occurring within healthcare informatics: resistance to change, failed implementations, scope creep, gaps in quality, silos of data, poorly designed systems - even clinical information applications that cause more harm than good. Read about a success and the innovations in nursing informatics that are occurring throughout the United States within clinical informatics and the healthcare information systems arena.

http://community.advanceweb.com/blogs/nurses_18/archive/2012/02/01/innovations-in-nursing-informatics-wired-in-rural-washington.aspx

[Ted]

Hello -

I just read the link that you provided regarding a success story of one healthcare facility. The first paragraph caught my eye:

Mason General Hospital (MGH) is a 25-bed critical access hospital located in Shelton, WA. Receiving the status of "Most Wired -Rural" hospital in 2008 and 2009, MGH in 2011 was named one of the nation's "Most Wired" hospitals by Hospitals & Health Networks magazine. Although a rural hospital, and perhaps "small" by big city standards, MGH has been successfully providing its staff, providers and clinicians with cutting edge, best practice technological tools for several years.

I work for a "Critical Care Access Hospital" and, at present, we seem to be (unintentionally) going for the "Most Wired - Rural" . But we're also going through a lot of growing pains too. We're "wired" up to the point of taking computer-based physician orders. (I STILL don't have down the acronyms for all of the "Computery Thingy Stuff" aka "CTS"!) This includes having the doctor "writing" med orders via the computer, receiving these orders via computer and finally having the computer used as the Medical Administration Record (MAR). . . or rather "eMAR". . . including scanning the patient's identification wrist band. In the new few months, we'll be getting the OmniCell (or whatever the Robot Drug Dispensing Thingy - RDDT - is called). THIS will significantly add to our happy little (and I mean "little") hospital's unintentional feat of achieving the "Most Wired - Rural". LOL! Actually, the ER already has the OmniCell, so they're already the "Most Wired" unit of the hospital.

I don't necessarily want to get into how I feel about all of this. . . on this particular thread. . . but it is encouraging to read that another Critical Care Access Facility seems to be successfully using all of the happiness of modern computer technology. Right now, I need to read success stories of other hospitals, especially Critical Care Access Facilities implementing all of this Computer-Based Everything (CBE). I need to find my happy place with all of this technology in the healthcare setting. (Whine.)

(For the record. . . I really don't like acronyms. Just can't remember them. Yet our hospital uses acronyms ALL the time. UGH!)