NURS FPX 6112 Assessment 5 Description of Practicum Hours

This practicum experience was 50 hours assisting the Nursing Informatics Department at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, with improving the efficiency of clinical workflows, documentation quality, and patient safety with the optimization of their electronic health record (EHR). The practicum experiences offered opportunities to observe and be involved in informatics activities that facilitate the utilization of evidence to support nursing practice and data to support decision making.

Much of the practicum was dedicated to observing the nurses’ process when using nursing documentation in the EHR. Collaborated with nurse informaticists to determine if there were any redundancies, inefficiencies, or barriers to the nurses at the bedside. I mapped and analysed workflow through the use of workflows and made a qualitative observation of the interaction of nurses with clinical decision support tools, medication administration records, patient assessment tools, and templates. Optimising the use of EHRs is crucial for the efficient delivery of quality patient care, as it plays an integral role in patient data management and enables informed, rapid decision-making, which is so important for the quality of clinical care.

I participated in data collection procedures to check the compliance with nursing documentation standards. I analyzed documentation completion rates, medication reconciliation, and patient education records by using dashboards. These activities enhanced my understanding of how healthcare data can be used to monitor performance and quality improvement programs. The other component of the practicum experience was collecting data to assess how well the clinical decision support alerts were working at the institution to decrease medication errors and increase patient outcomes. I have looked at feedback from users of the alarms (nurses) and discussed with the informatics team ways of making the alarms more relevant and user-friendly. Further, I also participated in meetings with multiple disciplines, including the nursing leadership, information technology specialists, quality improvement, and nurse informaticists. The following changes to the systems, optimizing EHR systems, cybersecurity awareness, and data governance practices were discussed. These meetings have brought up the importance of nurse informaticists as both a liaison between clinical care and information technology and a facilitator for the healthcare technologies to provide safe, efficient, and patient-centered care. In addition to attending staff trainings on new EHR features and documentation protocols, the practicum involved being integrated into the workflows within the agency’s daily schedule. The practicum also entailed involvement in staff education programs about the new documentation and EHR features best practices. I helped create educational resources and observed training sessions to help get users up to speed on system enhancements and their usage. Evidence shows that good training surrounding the use of EHRs is one of the biggest factors in implementing and utilizing EHRs with nurses.

Overall, this total of 50 practicum hours built on my skills in nursing informatics, health care technology assessment, data analysis, health workflow design, and health care quality improvement. This experience furthered my knowledge of the role informatics solutions play in the safety of the patient, compliance with regulations, active healthcare operation, and patient outcomes.