What Technology Do You Find Most Beneficial To Use In Your W ✓ Solved

What technology do you find most beneficial to use in your work

What technology do you find most beneficial to use in your work or school setting? Least beneficial? Why do you find this tool useful or not? Then, using your imagination, look to the future and think about how this tool could be enhanced even further. Describe your dream technology, with consideration for patient care and safety. Incorporate how nursing informatics would play a role in this future tool. Utilize the Quality and Safety Education in Nursing (QSEN) website for informatics and explain how this organization could standardize your future tool. Address the following: describe patient-care technologies to meet needs of a diverse patient population; analyze data from all relevant sources, including technology, to inform care delivery; define standardized terminology that reflects nursing’s unique contribution to patient outcomes; investigate safeguards and decision-support tools embedded in patient-care technologies and information systems to support a safe environment for patients and healthcare workers; identify patient-care technologies, information systems, and communication devices that support nursing practice; examine the use of information systems to document interventions related to nurse-sensitive outcomes; discuss the value of best evidence as a driver for change in nursing care delivery.

Paper For Above Instructions

Introduction

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) integrated with clinical decision support (CDS) represent the single most beneficial technology in contemporary nursing practice and education because they centralize patient data, enable evidence-based alerts, and facilitate communication across disciplines (Bates & Gawande, 2003; HIMSS, 2017). The least beneficial tools are fragmented, non-interoperable legacy systems or single-function devices (for example, standalone pagers or isolated medical devices) that create information silos, increase cognitive burden, and heighten safety risks (Institute of Medicine, 2001). This paper describes why integrated EHR/CDS is valuable, imagines a future “dream” nursing technology that enhances patient care and safety, and explains how nursing informatics and QSEN competencies could standardize and operationalize that tool.

Why EHRs with CDS Are Most Beneficial

EHRs with embedded CDS synthesize medication lists, lab results, allergies, and nursing assessments in real time, reducing errors and supporting timely interventions (Bates & Gawande, 2003). Nurses use these systems to document interventions, track nurse-sensitive outcomes (e.g., pressure ulcers, falls, infection rates), and communicate with interdisciplinary teams (HIMSS, 2017). CDS modules deliver evidence-based reminders (e.g., immunizations, VTE prophylaxis), dosing calculators, and risk stratification—directly improving patient safety and workflow efficiency (AHRQ, 2012). These systems also enable data aggregation for quality improvement and research, aligning practice with best evidence (Topol, 2019).

Why Fragmented Tools Are Least Beneficial

Standalone devices and non-interoperable platforms force clinicians to switch contexts, manually transcribe data, and reconcile conflicting information—tasks that contribute to clinician burnout and patient harm (Institute of Medicine, 2001). Pager systems and legacy monitors that do not integrate with the EHR produce redundant alerts and delay response times. Poorly designed user interfaces and excessive, non-specific alerts create alert fatigue, undermining CDS effectiveness (AHRQ, 2012).

Dream Technology: The Nurse-Centric Integrated Clinical Companion (NICC)

Vision: A unified, interoperable Nurse-Centric Integrated Clinical Companion (NICC) platform that augments bedside nursing through real-time data fusion, explainable AI-driven decision support, standardized nursing terminology mapping, and automated documentation tailored to diverse patient needs.

Core Features

• Real-time interoperability with EHRs, bedside sensors, infusion pumps, wearables, and patient portals using standards (HL7 FHIR, LOINC, SNOMED CT) to ensure accurate data exchange and semantic consistency (SNOMED International, 2019).
• Explainable AI-driven CDS that generates prioritized, context-specific recommendations (e.g., early sepsis alerts, skin integrity risk mitigation) with clear rationale and evidence links, supporting nurse decision making and preserving clinician autonomy (Topol, 2019).
• Automated, voice-enabled documentation that captures nursing assessments and interventions using standardized nursing languages (NANDA, NIC, NOC) mapped to SNOMED CT to quantify nurse-sensitive outcomes and support research (ANA, 2015; SNOMED International, 2019).
• Adaptive interfaces and multi-language support to meet the needs of diverse patient populations and health literacy levels, including culturally tailored education delivered via patient-facing apps.
• Robust safety safeguards: human-in-the-loop verification, tiered alert severity, audit trails, role-based access, and real-time medication barcode and infusion pump reconciliation to prevent adverse events (FDA, 2016).

Nursing Informatics Role

Nursing informaticists would lead NICC co-design, ensuring clinical workflows are respected and nursing knowledge is encoded in terminology and CDS logic. Informatics specialists bridge clinicians and engineers to translate nurse-sensitive indicators into measurable EHR data elements, validate predictive models, and oversee implementation, training, and continuous improvement (HIMSS, 2017; ANA, 2015).

QSEN Standardization and Competency Integration

QSEN provides core competencies in informatics that could be adapted to NICC standardization: teachable competencies for nurses (informatics knowledge, information management, and patient-centered technology use), vendor certification guidance for interoperability and usability metrics, and safety standards for CDS implementation (QSEN Institute, n.d.). QSEN could formalize benchmarks for alert appropriateness, documentation completeness for nurse-sensitive outcomes, and patient-centered design metrics, enabling accreditation and consistent national benchmarks.

Data Analysis, Terminology, and Nurse-Sensitive Outcomes

NICC would ingest clinical, device, patient-reported, and social determinant data, applying analytics to inform care (AHRQ, 2012). Mapping nursing documentation to standardized terminologies (NANDA/NIC/NOC→SNOMED CT) enables aggregation of nurse-sensitive outcomes across settings, supporting quality metrics and reimbursement models tied to nursing interventions (ANA, 2015; SNOMED International, 2019).

Safeguards and Decision-Support

Built-in safeguards include threshold tuning to reduce false positives, mandatory nurse confirmation for high-risk CDS-triggered actions, continuous monitoring of model performance, and an incident-reporting loop to iteratively refine algorithms (FDA, 2016; WHO, 2019). Decision-support transparency (explainable AI) ensures nurses can evaluate recommendations and retain clinical judgment (Topol, 2019).

Supporting Diverse Patient Populations

NICC would include culturally sensitive care pathways, multilingual patient education modules, and analytics that flag equity gaps (e.g., differential outcomes by race, language, or socioeconomic status) to inform targeted interventions and reduce disparities (WHO, 2019).

Documentation and Evidence-Based Change

By automating structured documentation of nursing interventions and outcomes and linking them to evidence sources, NICC would enable rapid-cycle evaluation of practice changes. Aggregated outcome data would drive evidence-based policy and care redesign consistent with IOM recommendations to close the quality gap (Institute of Medicine, 2001).

Conclusion

Integrated EHR/CDS systems are currently the most beneficial technologies for nursing practice because they centralize data and support evidence-based action. Legacy, non-interoperable tools remain least beneficial due to fragmentation and safety risk. The proposed NICC combines interoperability, explainable AI, standardized nursing terminology, strong safeguards, and QSEN-aligned competencies to enhance patient safety, support diverse populations, and quantify nursing’s contribution to outcomes. Nursing informatics will be essential to design, implement, evaluate, and standardize such innovation, ensuring that technology augments nursing practice while preserving patient-centered, safe care (HIMSS, 2017; QSEN Institute, n.d.).

References

• AHRQ. (2012). Clinical Decision Support. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. https://www.ahrq.gov
• American Nurses Association (ANA). (2015). Nursing Informatics: Scope and Standards of Practice. ANA Publishing.
• Bates, D. W., & Gawande, A. A. (2003). Improving safety with information technology. New England Journal of Medicine, 348(25), 2526–2534.
• FDA. (2016). Postmarket Management of Cybersecurity in Medical Devices. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. https://www.fda.gov
• HIMSS. (2017). Nursing Informatics: The Specialty That Connects Nursing to the Use of Health Technology. Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. https://www.himss.org
• Institute of Medicine (IOM). (2001). Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century. National Academies Press.
• QSEN Institute. (n.d.). Informatics. Quality and Safety Education for Nurses. http://qsen.org
• SNOMED International. (2019). SNOMED CT: Enabling interoperability. https://www.snomed.org
• Topol, E. (2019). Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again. Basic Books.
• World Health Organization (WHO). (2019). Patient Safety. https://www.who.int/teams/integrated-health-services/patient-safety