Nurses as Knowledge Workers, Research Paper Example

The knowledge worker skills are the vital skills useful in gathering of data, analyzing it, and the identification of the patterns and trends in the clinic. This means that the skills are helpful in ensuring that information from different patients in a given unit is fully gathered. The knowledge worker skills equip the nurses as they carry out their daily responsibilities in the clinical units. All nurses should get these skills but their managers should be at the forefront in obtaining the skills. Nurse Managers develop the knowledge worker skills in gathering, analyzing, and identification of the trends and patterns in the clinic. They will also enhance their leadership skills. There are four useful knowledge worker skills, which are applicable in the decision making as far as the patient-care delivery is concerned. These skills include data user, knowledge user, information user, and knowledge user skills (DePompa, 2010).

The knowledge worker skills will enhance the transformation of the nurses from mere caregivers to critical thinkers in the field of healthcare. However, this will be strengthened by changes that are taking place in the healthcare technologies. The technologies will serve to improve the efficiency accuracy and overall outcome of the various healthcare units. The healthcare staff should strive to equip itself in the new technologies to enhance performance. However, the nurse managers need to be the first to equip themselves with the electronic data systems skills as leaders of the various units. This will assist them in ensuring proper management of their units, with few hitches in the collection and analysis of patient information electronically. The properly gathered information from each patient will ensure that the care given to patients is of high quality. It should be the sole responsibility, therefore, for all the nurse managers to ensure that all staff in their various units to ensure proper and efficient care of patients embrace the electronic initiatives in the healthcare system. This will consequently ease their work and improve their performance levels in their units.

Following the current information setting where the electronic health records are in application, the nursing carrier has a bright future. The electronic data systems will trigger an immense growth in this carrier. This is because it will eliminate the tedious and erroneous manual, paper documentation that has been previously been in constant use. This means that the healthcare nurses are bound to have an easy way around about their daily chores at their units. The reforms of healthcare put a distinctive emphasis on the improved access, decreased costs, and high quality when using technology and electronic systems to collect analyzed health data (Hebda & Czar, 2009). Because of the increased costs in health care, the adoption of electronic health records and technology will ensure the decrease of these costs as well as enhance a quick accessibility of the health records.

Cost reduction will accompany the replacement of the paper work involved in documentation. The daily purchases of the daily recording material will be replaced by the cheap electronic data storage. After the initial costs encountered in installation of the electronic data system, the system of data storage becomes cheap and affordable. The costs incurred will be the maintenance costs. The system will also enhance the saving of time since what used to be done over long periods will be reduced to few days. In addition, the tracing of information and analysis process will be fast and efficient.

This promising future of nursing will come with some implications. This has to do with the acquiring of technological skills in electronic healthcare systems. The nurse managers together with their staff are the ones directly charged with the responsibility of ensuring that the data collection and analysis in the healthcare system is properly managed. It is their main responsibility inasmuch as the nurse informatics may play some responsibility in ensuring a functional electronic health records are successful. Therefore, the nurse managers are supposed to ensure that the staff charged with the data collection and analysis responsibilities are fully equipped with the necessary basic information technology skills.

Nursing in this information setting is necessary within the context of other health initiatives, such as the IOM reports, the Patient Care Accountability and Affordability Act, Evidence-Based practice emphasis. This is because the death rates resulting from poor healthcare are going to reduce drastically. This will consequently improve the living standards of the members of the society and raise the life expectancy.

Innovation plays a center in this discussion. This is because innovation resulted to the development of electronic healthcare, which is bringing a revolution in the nursing field (Kirby, 2010). In addition, the units in healthcare are quickly undergoing digital revolution leaving the paper documentation that has been applied for a long time. In this digital revolution, electronic health records (EHRs) will play a fundamental role in transforming the healthcare department. Standardization of the entire system accompanies its implementation to ensure quick and easy exchange of information. The EHRs, once standardized can also be used anywhere once a proper network has been put up. This will help to enhance the quick growth of the healthcare system. All this is indebted to the quality work of innovation. Without innovation, the new technologies observed in nursing could not be there.

There is a need, therefore, to support innovation due to the vital role it plays in various fields. Innovation can be supported by investing in it. Investments in technology can be done through equipping the young and innovative minds. This is possible by supporting research institutions and institutions of higher learning. The students in universities and colleges should be encouraged to invent new systems that will ease work involved in various fields. Students with innovations should receive funding to farther their innovations until they are realized.

The implementation of the new technologies in nursing, as it is now evident, has suffered challenges of unskilled labor to enhance it. There are no people in the healthcare system having the technical knowhow to implement the upcoming technologies in nursing. This challenge will be dealt with, only if the nurse managers will be quick to embrace these technologies, learn how to use them and then pass it down to the staff in their units.

The nurse managers need to be committed in providing proper leadership in the use of these technologies. They should lead by example by showing the junior staff what is expected of them. This leadership form is result oriented and bears much fruit. The nurse managers who are equipped with the knowledge worker skills will become better leaders in these electronic technologies. This is because they will comprehend and acclimatize to the use of the new technologies easily (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2009).

The healthcare staff should prepare for success in their units if at all their units already uses the electronic patient records. However, this success will be enhanced by nurse managers who are knowledge workers, role models in technology, critical communicators, and agents of change for improvement.

References

DePompa, B. (2010, September 2). Technological advances key to healthcare transformation. Retrieved April 12, 2012, from http://fcw.com/microsites/2010-health-it/transformation.aspx?admgarea=TC_HEALTHIT

Hebda, T., & Czar, P. (2009). Handbook of Informatics for Nurses and Healthcare Professionals. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Kirby, K. K. (2010). Are your nurse managers ready for health care reform? Nurs Econ. Nurs. Econ. , 208-211.

McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. (2009). Nursing Informatics and the Foundation of Knowledge. Sudbury, MA : Jones and Bartlett Learning.