Information Technology, Safety, and Patient Outcomes Medicine Essay

Information Technology, Safety, and Patient Outcomes
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Information Technology, Safety, and Patient Outcomes
Explain why information and technology skills are essential for safe patient care.
Information technology has been integrated into almost all sectors. Its role in nursing and healthcare continues to grow as its use and importance are slowly being demystified. Today, healthcare depends greatly on information technology, and this necessitates the adoption of IT skills by nurses and other healthcare professionals.
Improvement of patient care is chief among the reasons for arming oneself with IT skills. According to Rodziewicz, Houseman, and Hipskind (2020), medical errors account for "over $4 billion per year" and "cost approximately $20 billion a year." These are staggering numbers that help indicate that, indeed, medical errors pose a major challenge to safe patient care. The integration of IT in patient care has helped to alleviate this problem to a great extent. For example, certain tasks have been automated, which has helped improve nurses' productivity while also reducing medical errors. Also, the ease of access to a patient's historical information has helped reduce the frequency of medical errors. Nurses have access to patient's allergy information and other patient-specific information, including their medication interaction. Such pieces of information are quite crucial and help nurses and doctors enhance patient safety. However, all the above calls for the adoption of IT skills by nurses. Nurses have to put themselves in positions of power through information accumulation, especially regarding concepts like EHR and its use.
IT skills are also crucial for safe patient care because they help improve and promote care coordination. From time to time, nurses are called upon to coordinate patient care with other healthcare professionals. For example, a nurse could be called upon to relay information to physicians, therapists, or other nurses. With their proficiency in using EHRs and other information processing systems in hospitals, nurses will share the required information. The seamless coordination between nurses and other healthcare professionals helps ensure safe patient care is an achievable goal.
Identify your role as a baccalaureate-prepared nurse (BSN) to use information and technology to improve safety and patient outcomes. What will you, as the BSN prepared nurse do differently?
One of my roles as a baccalaureate-prepared nurse, especially concerning IT and its influence on safety and patient outcomes, will be to embrace change. Often, technological advancements are received with a lot of resistance by the affected populace. However, knowing and having seen IT's benefits in helping improve safety and patient outcomes, one of the roles has to be the willingness to embrace change.
My other role is to ensure that I work hard to enhance my IT profici...