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Nursing Informatics Career
By an allied health world contributing writer
Published: January 14th, 2010
What is nursing informatics?
Nursing informatics integrates the field of nursing with information management and technology. When this field first emerged, nurses with technical knowledge and experience began to be heavily involved with the design of software programs to be used by other nurses and health care employees. Today, nursing informatics professionals not only create necessary programs and software but also engage in a number of job functions that optimize the nursing process flow, allow documentation to be electronically captured, and improve the overall healthcare process through the use of technology.
Nursing informatics professionals’ role in documentation improvement leaves less room for error, which further benefits 
both nurses as well as patients. Evaluating workflow processes and developing ways to improve them can save hospitals a great deal of money. The main goal for evaluating processes is to provide safe and efficient patient care. By evaluating and modifying processes, often times multiple benefits are created which may include increased patient safety, streamlined processes as well as job realignments as fewer employees are needed to complete a job or patient care process related task.
Learn more about the nursing informatics certification.
How do nursing informaticists improve processes?
A crucial aspect of a nursing informaticist’s job involves process improvement. One department within a hospital that is often in need of process improvement is the Operating Room (OR). This area, which includes many complexities, represents the main money maker for a hospital and illustrates the necessity of having it run efficiently. Nursing informatics professionals working in the operating room areas oftentimes put on scrubs to observe, examining the current processes so they are able to suggest and implement new processes and software to aid in the workflow.Learn more about the nursing informatics degree.
Nursing informatics professionals are responsible for other areas in addition to the OR, such as Patient Care floor areas. However, areas like Patient Care typically have a nurse informaticist responsible for many patient care areas because of the uniformity of the work processes.
What is the history of nursing informatics?
In the early to late 1800s Florence Nightengale served as one of the first nurses. She used statistics to support theories. Many people believe her to be the first informatics nurse, although this role has definitely evolved over time. Other important events that molded this profession include:1982 – CARING was developed by Susan Newbold as a non-profit organization with the goal of automating healthcare systems.
1992 – The American Nursing Informatics Association (ANIA) started in Southern California as a group for nursing informaticists to convene as professionals. Today it serves as an organization dedicated to the continued growth and advancement of this profession.
1998--The first nursing informatics class was offered at Yonsei University College of Nursing in Seoul, Korea
1999 – The American Medical Informatics Association conference took place and was the first with the purpose of developing core curricula for nursing and health informatics education programs.
2001 – A Scope and Standards of Nursing Informatics document was developed and published. This document defined nursing informatics.