Module 1

Hello! My name is Raeleen Orme, most people just call me Rae, so please feel free to do so as well. I have been a nurse at the same facility for the past 18 years, 15 of them as an RN. I am currently enrolled in the University of Utah’s Family Nurse Practitioner program. I will graduate with my Master’s in Science in 2011.

I have been in nursing for some time now. I have personally witnessed the progression of technology in health care. I started my career having to hand-chart everything on the patient record. My graduating class (RN) was the very last class that took State Boards on the old Scantron “fill in the bubble with a #2 pencil” test. Now, charting and most tests (for Boards) are performed via the use of a computer. According to Zytowski (2003) since 1990 informatics has played a major role especially in the critical care and advanced nursing practice setting. I currently work in the ICU and can tell you from experience that truer words have never been spoken. Most patient care is focused around bedside monitoring and computerized charting. Now that I am furthering my education, I am slowly awakening to the fact that as an NP informatics will play a different yet just as significant role in my future. The use of Informatics will assist me in information retrieval, reimbursement, and guide my research so that I am better able to utilize evidence-based practice. And, according to Zytowski (2003) rural NP’s are affected by lack of resources more so than those NP’s that work in urban areas; so it would behoove me to learn and digest all informatics has to offer as my future and my patient’s are going to depend on it.

IT currently taking effect in my work areas is: new bedside HP monitoring devices that can actually learn and become smarter the more one uses them; specialized chart types that when used properly (i.e. less free text) the more data that is accrued according to patient acuity. Speaking of free texting, most of the nurses used to like this feature and used it often until a fellow administrative nurse told us that “free texting” in the patients chart was not associated with any patient data identifiers, i.e.; if the nurse free texted an activity like hygiene care instead of utilizing the “Hygiene Care” icon, that information would not show up on the administrative side of data collection and therefore, the patients acuity and the amount of nursing time needed to care for the patient would be less. Module 1 PowerPoint 3 discusses this very problem saying, unstructured notes are familiar and easy to create but difficult to extract info from whereas structured notes allow support for decisions [like nurse:patient ratios] to be made (Coding and Classification of Clinical Data, 2009). Our ER uses the “T-System” that automatically performs physician ICD and CPT coding, and our medications are dispensed using an automated drug dispensing machine called “Pyxis.”