Reflective Paper of Nursing Informatics

Based on your readings this week, how has your impression of informatics, especially nursing informatics, changed? Informatics and particularly nursing informatics prior to this week meant to me a nursing specialty where nurses worked on improving and implementing the computer programs used in nursing practice. If nursing informatics encompasses those aspects, it also means security, patient care, nursing education and knowledge management (Darvish, Bahramnezhad, Keyhanian & Navidhamidi, 2014). Nursing uses information, knowledge and experiences to provide accurate care for patients, it is important that all this data be readily available to nurses so they can make the appropriate clinical judgement; informatics organized and managed data to make them available quicker to the provider (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2014). After my readings this week I realize that nursing informatics is all around me and also a big part of my practice. Nurses can use informatics to provide better care and spread knowledge quicker and improve the discipline; it is not solely the focus of nurses working in nursing informatics.