Nursing Informatics: Data Quality, Workflow Design and the Safety of the Systems Nurses Work In

Course Purpose

3 contact hours nursing continuing education course: Nursing Informatics: Data Quality, Workflow Design and the Safety of the Systems Nurses Work In.

Continuing Education Credit Designation

This educational activity is credited for 3 contact hours at completion of the activity.

Overview

3 contact hours nursing continuing education course: Nursing Informatics: Data Quality, Workflow Design and the Safety of the Systems Nurses Work In.

Objectives

Upon completion of this independent study, the learner will be able to:

1. Describe the core functions typically bundled into an electronic health record, including order entry, laboratory and imaging reporting and device interfaces, and explain why each function creates both a safety gain and a new failure mode.
2. Explain the documented benefits of the move from paper to electronic records, including decreases in medication errors and improved guideline adherence, without overstating them as elimination of error.
3. Identify usability hazards that appear in nursing work, including poor information display, complicated screen sequences and navigation, and mismatch between the record's workflow and clinical workflow.
4. Recognise data integrity hazards created by content-import features such as copy-forward and copy-and-paste, unclear source and date of displayed information, default values and simultaneous record editing, and describe the documentation habits that limit each.
5. Explain overspecification in order entry, using the documented example of a system requiring the prescriber to select the medication schedule and of forced selection from similar-looking brand name insulins, and describe the nurse's role in catching the resulting errors.
6. Describe alert fatigue with reference to the retrieved alert-burden studies, explain why the majority of order entry alerts are clinically inconsequential, and explain why overriding critical alerts becomes more likely as alert exposure grows.
7. Distinguish between what clinical decision support reliably contributes and what it does not, using the retrieved evidence on computerized reminders and on prescribing error reduction with order entry.
8. Carry out the nursing contribution to medication reconciliation at admission, transfer and discharge, and state accurately what the retrieved evidence does and does not show about its effect on readmissions and adverse events.
9. Explain how failure to close the loop on test results and telephone triage contributes to missed and delayed diagnosis, and describe the information-system practices that support timely follow-up.
10. Name the cognitive biases catalogued in the retrieved diagnostic safety source, including blind obedience to test results or expert opinion, and relate each to what a nurse observes and documents.
11. Describe the safety considerations specific to telehealth modalities, including limited physical examination, reliance on patients to measure or describe findings, medication reconciliation quality, and access and literacy variation.
12. Describe the three documented strands of patient engagement in safety and explain why a robust safety programme cannot depend on patient participation alone.
13. Apply human factors reasoning to an electronic record complaint, distinguishing a training problem from a design problem and describing what evidence to attach when escalating.
14. Explain how nursing surveillance, workload and interruption during medication administration interact with documentation demands and information systems.
15. Conduct and receive an electronic handoff so that authority and responsibility transfer explicitly, information is actively updated rather than inherited, and the receiver has an opportunity to question and read back.
16. Escalate an informatics hazard through the facility's event reporting and governance routes, and explain the just culture distinctions and leadership follow-up that determine whether staff keep reporting.

Who this course is for:

Advanced Practice Registered Nurses, registered nurses, licensed practical or vocational nurses, and other healthcare providers in any setting who want continuing education on Nursing Informatics: Data Quality, Workflow Design and the Safety of the Systems Nurses Work In.

Course outline

12 sections · finish in any order across devices

1. 1

   Course overview and learning objectives

2. 2

   Introduction

3. 3

   What the record actually is: functions, gains and the hazards that came with them

4. 4

   Documentation integrity: copy-forward, defaults and knowing when a finding was actually assessed

5. 5

   Orders, order sets and overspecification: where the wrong thing becomes easy to choose

6. 6

   Alerts, alarms and the arithmetic of attention

7. 7

   Medication reconciliation across transitions, and what the evidence actually supports

8. 8

   Results, follow-up loops and the information systems side of diagnostic safety

9. 9

   Telehealth and remote monitoring: what the modality takes away and what it gives back

10. 10

    Patients in the record, reporting a system hazard, and the culture that decides whether it gets fixed

11. 11

    Nursing Considerations

12. 12

    Conclusion

This Course Satisfies

Requirement summaries come from our state requirement records. All Users of Fast CE For Less’s website and content are responsible for knowing their state’s license and renewal requirements.

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