Hi everyone,
I am Lyn Standing. I am writing this blog as a class assignment for Nursing 6004 informatics class. I have been a nurse for 17 years. I am in the Neonatal Nurse Practitioner program at the University of Utah. I live in Ogden, UT. I am married with 5 beautiful children. When not busy in school I am spending time at their activities, camping, or reading a good book. This past summer I had the privilage to run both the Wasatch back ragnar and the Las Vegas ragnar with my family. It was a great experience.
As a graduate level nurse there is a great need to know about information management. First there is a need for keeping records of each patient. Computers can be used to keep a large amount of information in a small amount of space. It also keeps the information accessible. When information is on paper it is easily lost, destroyed, and hard to file in places that you can access easily. Information has to be handled carefully since there are privacy and security issues. Federal regulations have been set up through the HIPPA laws. Some of the information that we have to keep track of are not only the medical records, but also being able to budget, maintain the needed supplies, and keep employee records of immunizations.
Today IT has many uses. We scan our medications prior to giving them to the infants. This helps to ensure that the medication is the right one ordered, at the right time and being given to the right patient. We have x-rays that are available to the doctors on the computer not only at our hospital, but also throughout the IHC system hospitals and clinics. We order labs and get the results through the computer. Our monitors can print out heart rhythms and vital signs onto a printer for a hard copy. In the NICU we also have web cams. This allows our parents to see their infants during care times when they aren't able to be at the hospital. We have voceras that allow the nurses to communicate with each other and physicians without having to be in the same room. It comes in handy when there is an emergency going on.
I am excited to learn more about informatics this semester.
