Implications of the American Nurses Association Scope and Standards of Practice for nursing informatics for nurse educators: A discussion
Article Outline
- Foundational informatics knowledge and skills
- The informatics specialist as a nursing educator
- References
In January 2008, the third revision of the Scope and Standards of Practice for Nursing Informatics was published. This document “articulates the essentials of nursing informatics, its accountabilities and activities for both nursing informatics specialists and generalists. Its standards are those by which all nurses practice nursing informatics, and reflect and specify practice priorities and perspectives.”1
Using the Scope and Standards document as a springboard to stimulate discussion about faculty informatics education, 2 questions are raised: • What foundational nursing informatics knowledge is required to prepare nursing faculty for their role as educators? • What is the scope of practice of the informatics specialist who is a nurse educator?
Foundational informatics knowledge and skills
Just as all nurses are expected to have basic knowledge and skills related to anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology, they also must have knowledge and skills related to computer and information literacy. The Scope and Standards of Practice clearly identifies these 2 areas as fundamental for nursing informatics.2
Computer Literacy
“Computer literacy is a core competency needed in health care, and should be taught in nursing curricula at all levels.”2 Should the term computer literacy include the concepts embedded within computer fluency? In 1999, the National Academy of Science Committee on Information Technology Literacy published a report defining the skill sets and knowledge needed to not be just computer literate but to be computer fluent.3 Fluency with information technology requires contemporary skills, foundational concepts, and intellectual capabilities. These are defined as follows:
Many universities and nursing programs include computer literacy as an expected outcome. To date, much of the emphasis is on contemporary skills in lieu of foundational concepts and intellectual capabilities. Contemporary skills change rapidly as the technology changes. However, foundational concepts and intellectual capabilities are more long-lasting, especially in terms of how these skills are used in the practice of nursing.
Faculty need foundational concepts and intellectual capabilities as a basis for teaching students informatics. This can be accomplished by integrating these concepts and capabilities into faculty educational preparation and, concomitantly, student curricula. For example, faculty members spend a great deal of time teaching students the procedural knowledge needed to complete and document a systematic patient assessment. Do faculty have the computer-related foundational concepts and intellectual capabilities to teach a systematic process to access and analyze longitudinal patient assessment data in electronic health records? Are faculty members developing these concepts and capabilities so they may teach information synthesis across various sources of data to assure optimal clinical decision-making?
Information Literacy
The revised Scope and Standards states, “In addition, information literacy must be integrated into practice and used to support knowledge management.”2 In 1989, the American Library Association Presidential Committee on Information Literacy issued a report defining 4 components of information literacy.4 These are the ability to: (1) recognize when information is needed, (2) locate, (3) evaluate, and (4) effectively use the needed information.
In 2000, the Board of Directors of the Association of College and Research Libraries approved information literacy competency standards for higher education.5 However, nursing faculty need a more sophisticated level of information literacy than described in 2000. Faculty need to create a learning environment with access to high quality information. Quality information resources help students develop the skills needed to evaluate information quality after they graduate from educational programs. In the days of hardcopy, this simply meant ordering current books for the nursing and/or the health sciences library. Today’s nursing faculty need informatics knowledge and skills to support the development and maintenance of multimedia online library collections. Multimedia material may include traditional resources such as journals and books, but also iPod casts, simulation exercises and other more non-traditional materials.
In today’s computerized information world, faculty members need to understand both the informational content as well as the market in which this content is sold. The information market is a multimillion dollar business for vendors who produce information, vendors who deliver it, and vendors who create the systems for processing the information—all of whom may be separate entities. For example, CINAHL is a product owned by EBSCO Industries Inc.6 The information in this product has been both purchased and produced by CINAHL. However, the product is delivered to libraries by 5 different vendors with differing packages and pricing.7 These vary in terms of the actual journals included, the availability of full-text articles and the presentation format. Faculty should know to evaluate the quality of resources in these packages and to understand the market forces that can limit full access to these information products.
The informatics specialist as a nursing educator
The definition for nursing informatics clearly states that nursing informatics supports nurses in all roles, which includes the educational environment.2 A major question today is: How do we prepare a nurse educator whose specialty integrates nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage and communicate data, information, knowledge and wisdom in the nursing practice of nursing education?
To begin to answer this question, one must first ask: Is nursing informatics practice within the educational setting limited to teaching and conducting research about clinical nursing informatics? According to the Scope and Standards document, using technology in the delivery of nursing care to a patient is not nursing informatics, nor is the use of technology to deliver educational content the practice of nursing informatics. However, is the design and implementation of complex health care simulations in educational programs the practice of nursing informatics in the educational setting? Do these activities belong in a specialty called educational informatics?
The reality may be that informatics is reconfiguring our personal and professional worldview from linear, hierarchical, and separate structured realities to a world of overlapping, interacting concepts and disciplines. For example, the revised Scope and Standards changed a section previously titled “Boundaries of Nursing Informatics” to a discussion about the cross-disciplinary nature of NI, acknowledging the blurring of boundaries among other informatics and nursing specialties.2 Just as the boundaries for the specialist are blurring, informatics may influence traditional boundaries for educators as well. Thus, leaders in education may find that informatics knowledge and skills rather than position titles or new sub-specialties become the guiding concepts in the future.
No one questions the need for faculty to be prepared to teach future nurses to practice in the modern world of informatics-infused health care delivery. But what knowledge and skills should faculty master if they are to achieve this goal? This discussion raised 2 of the many questions that must be addressed if the faculty are to be prepared for this responsibility.
References
- . http://nursingworld.org/books/pdescr.cfm?cnum=15#978INFOhttp://nursingworld.org/books/pdescr.cfm?cnum=15#978INFOAccessed on January 8, 2008
- . Scope and Standards of Nursing Informatics Practice. Washington, DC: American Nurses Publishing; 2008;(Pub no 978INFO)
- . Being Fluent with Information Technology. National Academy Press: Washington, D.C http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=6482Accessed on January 9, 2008
- . http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/whitepapers/presidential.cfmAccessed on January 9, 2008
- . Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education 2000. Chicago, IL http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/standards.pdfAccessed on January 9, 2008
- . http://www.cinahl.com/Accessed on January 9, 2008
- . http://www.cinahl.com/prodsvcs/prodsvcs.htmAccessed on January 9, 2008
PII: S0029-6554(08)00032-8
doi:10.1016/j.outlook.2008.01.007
