Nursing informatics has become integral to the delivery of quality healthcare outcomes. By integrating informatics into the nursing process, nurses can more efficiently and effectively care for their patients. In this article, we will outline the benefits of nursing informatics for improving patient experience.
What is Nursing Informatics?
The definition provided by the American Nurses Association (ANA) has become widely referenced in defining nursing informatics:
Nursing Informatics “is the specialty that integrates nursing science with multiple information and analytical sciences to identify, define, manage, and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice.”
It is a field of nursing that integrates information technology into nursing practice. It encompasses the use of information technology in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of illness in patients.
Patient Experience Defined
Patient experience encompasses the range of interactions that patients have with the health care system, including their care from health plans and doctors, nurses, and staff in hospitals, physician practices, and other healthcare facilities. As an integral component of health care quality, patient experience includes several aspects of health care delivery that patients value highly when they seek and receive care, such as getting timely appointments, easy access to information, and good communication with health care providers.
Understanding patient experience is a key step in moving toward patient-centered care. By looking at various aspects of patient experience, one can assess the extent to which patients receive care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values. Evaluating patient experience and other components such as effectiveness and safety of care is essential to providing a complete picture of health care quality.
The terms patient satisfaction and patient experience are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. To assess patient experience, one must find out from patients whether something that should happen in a health care setting (such as clear communication with a provider) actually happened or how often it happened.
Satisfaction, on the other hand, is about whether a patient’s expectations about a health encounter were met. Two people who receive the same care but have different expectations for how that care is supposed to be delivered can give different satisfaction ratings because of their different expectations.
How is Patient Experience Measured?
While there are various ways to gather information on patient experience, CAHPS surveys have become critical tools for organizations interested in assessing the patient-centeredness of the care they deliver and identifying areas for improvement. CAHPS surveys do not ask patients how satisfied they were with their care; instead, they ask patients to report on the aspects of their experiences that are important to them and for which they are the best and sometimes the only source of information. Because the surveys ask well-tested questions using a consistent methodology across a large sample of respondents, they generate standardized and validated measures of patient experience that providers, consumers, and others can rely on.
A positive patient experience is an important goal in its own right. Moreover, substantial evidence points to a positive association between various aspects of patient experience, such as good communication between providers and patients, and several critical health care processes and outcomes. These processes and outcomes include patient adherence to medical advice, better clinical outcomes, improved patient safety practices, and lower utilization of unnecessary health care services.
How Does Nursing Informatics Help Improve Patient Experience?
Clinicians have more access than ever to electronic health records and diagnostic tools, which are essential for improving patient safety and outcomes. Clinical communication platforms help manage workflows, coordinate care, and enhance patient engagement while ensuring regulatory compliance. Data integration technologies enable you to link multiple systems together and make sure your team has access to the information they need at the right point in time. Integrating devices like smartphones into clinical workflows can also improve efficiency, cut costs, and increase patient satisfaction.
As the healthcare information revolution continues to accelerate, it is critically important to have a platform that enables all of your organization’s key stakeholders –from clinicians and researchers to healthcare facilities and pharmaceutical companies –to leverage the correct data, at the right time.
Why Visi Now?
Sotera Visi Mobile bridges the gap between intermittent spot-checking and ICU intensive monitoring. With continuous surveillance monitoring of key vital signs, early recognition and detection of patient deterioration enable clinicians to make timely and effective interventions.
Advanced monitoring is standard in ICUs, yet nearly half of all adverse events in hospitalized patients occur in the general care ward, where current monitoring protocols typically consist of intermittent spot checks about every 4-8 hours.
This leaves patients unmonitored for most of the time, where subtle abnormalities in vital signs go undetected until complications arise. Studies have shown that continuous vital signs monitoring is associated with significant improvements in key clinical outcomes in patients treated in the general care ward.
The ViSi Mobile comprehensive vital signs monitoring system keeps clinicians connected to their patients, whether in bed, in transport, or while ambulating, because even one failure to rescue is one too many.
By understanding and implementing nursing informatics into their practice, nurses can better deliver quality healthcare outcomes for their patients. What other ways do you think nursing informatics improve patient experience? We’d love to hear from you.
