Informatics Nursing: An Overview

When they dream of becoming a nurse someday, many young people conjure up a valiant image of Florence Nightingale, adorned with her signature lace nurse’s cap, carrying her iconic lantern, caring for wounded soldiers on the battlefield. Nightingale is seen by many as the founder of the nursing profession as we know it today; but the reality of contemporary nursing is more “battlefield” than “lace”.

While she’s acknowledged for improving patient outcomes, what’s lesser known about Nightingale is that she contributed much to how we approach nursing from a data and statistical perspective. As a statistician, she used the alarming discovery – that most army deaths were from preventable diseases rather than battle – to bolster support for new sanitary measures in hospitals, which, in turn, lowered mortality rates. Like a modern informatics nurse, she worked at the crossroads of patient care and information science.

Today, data factors into healthcare more than ever before. What for Nightingale was an experiment, has now spawned an entire profession within nursing focused on streamlining workflows and improving patient safety.

What is informatics in nursing?

Informatics in nursing refers to the analysis and development of the health systems nurses use in a clinical setting. Informatics nurses (or informaticists) leverage both their clinical expertise working directly with patients, along with their organizational and analytical abilities, to capture and apply data.

In a perioperative setting, capturing data must be completed efficiently, in a uniform way. Similarly, surgical procedures must be applied uniformly, with matching applicable coding. In an operating room, informatics nurses are the people making sure the right procedure matches the right staff member at the right time for the right patient.

Informatics nurses also work with modern technology. They supply electronic health records (EHR) software with patient data – including demographics, medical history, medication, allergies, test results and more – and they extract relevant information when needed. This data can be transferred to different providers, making the EHR a safe and efficient way to keep track of patient progress.

How does AORN Syntegrity benefit from informatics expertise?

AORN Syntegrity is an EHR enhancement for perioperative teams that provides a surgical procedure library and documentation resources to reduce the burden on nurses. Because our team has a background in nursing informatics specifically, we are able to hone our content based on real-world data to apply in a real-world setting. There’s nothing theoretical about a day in the life of an OR team – and there’s nothing theoretical about AORN Syntegrity.

Using data, we have developed the tools you need to help keep nurses happy and empowered in this “battlefield” of a job. That means patients will also feel at ease. Safety goes up. Costs go down. And it works because we look at information and evidence to design data sets and procedures lists that are quick and easy to apply.

For more information about AORN Syntegrity, sign up for a free consultation today.