The Advantages of an Information System in Nursing

Nursing information systems allows you to retrieve, monitor and analyze clinical information that you may use in patients' care plans. Typical nursing information systems have modules that manage clinical data from a variety of healthcare environments, which when made available in a timely and orderly fashion facilitate management of patients

Improved Workload Functionality

• The need for high-quality healthcare implies that accurate and timely information should be of primary importance. Staffing levels and appropriate skill mix per shift can be determined easily by using the shift modules, which can later be used in distribution of labor among the nurses. This leads to less time spent in designing and altering duty rosters.

Enhanced Decision Making

• According to HealthMad.com, information systems are computer-based applications used for transforming raw data into information usable in a variety of ways to improve operational efficiencies and the quality of service delivery. Right clinical decisions need right information, such as accessing medical resources online and identifying the right information that is critical in decision making. Decision support modules also provide prompts and reminders, and guides to disease linkages between signs or symptoms, etiologies or related factors and patient populations.

Scheduling and Personnel Management

• You can self-schedule your shifts using information systems. Patient care becomes more effective and economical using shift modules designed to handle absences, overtime, staffing levels and cost-effective staffing. This makes for more complete patient-care plans and more comprehensive assessments and evaluations.

Improved Drug Administration

• Information systems enable electronically prescribed drugs to become more understandable, as it is less likely that you can administer wrong drugs to patients. By using patient-charting modules, the patient's vital signs, admission and nursing assessments, care plan and nursing notes can be entered into the system and then stored in a central repository that you can retrieve when needed for drug administration.

Clinical Data Integration

• Patient records have become more readable and accurate with the application of nursing information systems, which have ensured improvement of standards of keeping records. Time spent on patient data classification is also reduced. Retrieval of both local and regional statistics on patients becomes easy, duplication of data entry is avoided, and there is less manual paperwork and fewer printouts.