Information Technology and Decision Making
Patient safety and care is reliant upon the quality of nurses’ daily decision making. Nurses are constantly tending to the needs of multiple patients by providing health care information, administering drug treatments, managing patient family concerns, as well as informing other nurses and staff on the patient’s condition.
Review your reading from this week and then address the following:
• Explain how well your current work setting supports you and your colleagues in decision making.
• Share your thoughts on two ways that electronic or computerized information technology could help you and your nursing colleagues improve decision making in your work setting. You can include decision support applications or not, as you wish.
Support your ideas or those of others with references from the professional nursing literature.
2
Write 700- to 1050-word paper in which you:
- Describe the authority structure of the plan’s implementation. This must describe who is responsible for implementing the plan. Include a description of the specific role of each of the following as it relates to the identified QI opportunity:
- Governance; (i.e., Board of Directors/Trustees)
- Executive Leadership (CEO, Chief Nursing Officer, CFO, etc)
- Quality Improvement Committee
- Medical Staff
- Middle Management
- Department staff
- Identify who is responsible for overseeing data collection and preparing data reports.
- Identify who the performance activity outcomes are communicated to and who does the communicating. Describe the specific changes to be implemented.
- Describe how staff will be educated regarding the plan. This covers how each staff member will be initially oriented to the plan and how each employee fits into the plan based on job responsibilities.
- Describe how the specific elements of the plan will be regularly evaluated.
Cite a minimum of 4 (no more than five years old) credible references (at the graduate level you must draw from relevant scholarly journals. Do not use websites, online dictionaries, etc.)