Nursing Leadership And Technology

Implementation of technology to improve patient safety and patient outcomes has not always been as smooth sailing as the leadership may want it to be. Literature shows that success has been seen in organizational leaders who create a shared vision with their staff, ensure an environment of collaboration and trust where the voice of staff is valued, and establish an ongoing process for problem solving that includes the input of staff. Such leadership is consistent with transformation leadership style where leaders and staff work interdependently to achieve improvement.

With the emergence of meaningful use and accountable care in healthcare, nursing roles, responsibilities and career trajectories are being transformed and key to these changes is nursing informatics (Troseth, 2012). Nursing informatics supports the nursing process by helping to integrate the data, information, and knowledge required for clinical decision making (ANA). Therefore in an attempt to leverage technology to improve patient outcomes, a new role of chief nursing information officer (CNIO) has emerged. A CNIO leads strategy, development and implementation of information technology to support nursing, nursing practice and clinical applications, but also collaborates with CNOs on the clinical and administrative decision-making process and develops clinical systems strategy with a regional CMIO (Troseth, 2012).

Driving Adoption of Technology for Nurses

You need to have true leadership and cooperation from staff.

Building a New Future

With all these advances in technology, demand is on the rise for nurses at the executive level to lead this process and possess the competencies needed to lead the development of informatics and assist in advancing the science. The CNIO role provides nursing leaders with that expertise, and an important partner in the advancement of the overall strategy for nursing within systems and organizations. A vision of the coalition for the future for nursing includes the CNE/CNO and CNIO partnerships which provides an important blend of competencies and talents that will advance nursing well.

The following are some of the initiatives for technology advancement in nursing;

• Develop and champion leaders with the ability to develop, deploy, re-engineer and integrate clinical information systems. They will also function as members of strategic management teams and will collaborate on goals and implementation of clinical information systems.
• Leverage programs such as The Alliance for NursingInformatics (ANI) Emerging Leader Program
• Advance nursing informatics education through partnerships with colleges of nursing
• Promote TIGER initiative.

     References
     

Troseth, M. (2012).Informatics & the Future of Nursing Practice: Technology is being integrated into every area of healthcare. What does that portend for nursing?Advance healthcare network for nurses. Retrieved from http://nursing.advanceweb.com/features/articles/informatics-the-future-of-nursing-practice.aspx

      Manos, D. (2012) CNIO role on the rise. Healthcare IT news. Retrieved from http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/cnio-role-rise

Nelson, R. & Staggers, N. (2014). Health Informatics: An Interprofessional Approach. Elsevier Mosby: St. Louis, Missouri.