NR512 HealthIT Topic of Week Assignment

The relevency that it has on my nursing position, is that when we discharge post partum mothers or med surg patients from out of town it is useful to determine what other medications have recently been prescribed. This will avoid prescribing medications that can interact with a patients current medications. Also, this allows the prescriber to determine if the patient is a drug seeker..This assignment is designed to help students

•  Develop an appreciation for informatics, basic skills and knowledge required in practice settings. Students will select a “hot” or popular topic of particular interest to their practice to discuss. The topic will be selected from the website using the link provided in the course Assignments section.

Course Outcomes

Through this assignment, the student will demonstrate the following ability. (CO 6) Describe health information systems within healthcare setting and the profession of nursing in all practice domains and settings including electronic health records (EHR), their management and patient-care information technology (IT). (PO 4) (CO 7) Explore trends and issues in NI and their impact on nursing practice in all domains. (POs 9, 11)

The exchange of health information is an important aspect in offering evidence based care and improving patient outcome. EHR interoperability and improved data-sharing abilities have improved care for patients. Healthcare providers including nurses and doctors require sharing information often and in real-time when diagnosing, treating and prescribing medications. Nursing informatics offers nurses the opportunity to adopt technology to improve the quality care. This scholarly paper will explore the concept of EHR interoperability. The first section will discuss the rationale for selecting this topic. In the second part, the essay will analyze how the topic will impact practicing, and how informatics knowledge and skills were applied to develop the assignment.

I have selected EHR Interoperability as the topic for this essay because it is relevant to my nursing position. EHR Interoperability involves the exchange of health information across systems with the aim of improving the quality of care. According to Guarrera et al. (2014), interoperability is the capacity of health information systems to coordinate within and across institutional borders. EHR can support clinical decision making, exchange of health information and computerized order entry systems (Menachemi & Collum, 2011). The most important reason why I selected this topic is that a patient’s health information would be shared among authorized health care providers only. We can monitor the patients who have been discharged more seamlessly. For instance, when we discharge post partum or medical surgery patient from out of town, it is essential to identify what other medications have recently been prescribed. The medication monitoring will help to avoid prescribing medications that might interact with a patient’s current medication.

Monitoring the medication prescription will also be important to us because some medicines might have adverse impacts on patients who have been discharged. It is evident that an epidemic of prescription medicine abuse is inappropriately affecting mentally ill patients. Thus, prescription medications monitoring is an effective tool for analyzing addictions as well as high frequencies of patient exposure to prescribed medicines (Hackman et al., 2014). Some patients are general drug seekers. This will allow the prescriber to determine if the patient is a drug seeker. Providers might face pragmatic, legal and ethical issues when managing or treating addicted patients. For example, the misuse of opioids continues to escalate, and healthcare providers should be vigilant when prescribing medications (Cheatle, Comer, Wunsch, Skoufalos & Reddy, 2014). EHR Interoperability will help users to avoid possible mistakes, legal and ethical actions that might arise from treating a drug addict patient.

EHR Interoperability will influence practice in several positive ways. One of the most significant impacts will be assisting in the provision of excellent patient care. In EHR Interoperability, the patient's information is entered into a system that is accessed by authorized providers. The patient's information is then shared across multiple departments and healthcare facilities. Hence, it will affect practice by enhancing the provision of evidence based care. Another impact will be improving the quality of documentation. Nurses have higher chances of