Posted: March 28th, 2021

Transforming Nursing and Healthcare through Technology

Transforming Nursing and Healthcare through Technology
Nurses play a critical role in the development and implementation of the healthcare system. In this generation, the use of technology in healthcare has become quite significant and is offering so many advantages. However, there are still several challenges when implementing technology in the health system. The nurse’s role would feature in every stage of the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) (Risling (2017). The SDLC involves several steps such as the definition, analysis, design and implementation. In all these stages, the Nurse leader would play a critical role in helping the team to achieve some positive outcomes. The nurses, the purpose is not only limited to giving ideas, but also they should provide the details of the scope of the problem. The following are some of the critical steps that a nurse leader would be involved in while trying to use IT to achieve change in the Health system.
The graduate-level nurse should participate in the planning level in system development. The primary role that the leader should play at this level is to find out the scope of the problem and determine the solutions (McGonigle & Mastrian 2017). The leaders need to work closely with all the members of the project team and communicate with them on the steps to take towards finding the possible solutions. They should also help the team to make consideration of the cost, time benefits and other items that should help to achieve change within the systems.
The leader should also play an essential role in system analysis and requirements. The leader should focus on identifying the functional requirements of the project or the solution. At this stage, the leaders should also focus on analyzing the needs of other patients and ensure that the systems can meet these people’s expectations (Louis 2011). Therefore, the nurse should focus on communicating with the implementation teams on the steps that they should take towards meeting the needs of the patients even in the process of developing the systems. They should not only focus on implementation IT in healthcare but also ensuring that it meets the patients and the changing society.
Thirdly, the leaders should be involved in the system design. The focus of the leaders at this level is to describe the detail of the necessary features, specification and operation that will satisfy the functional aspects of the system (Louis 2011). The leader’s major role at this level is to coordinate all the stakeholders in order to define and address all the key issues that should go into the system. The leaders should understand the changing nursing and environment and thus focus on the critical aspects that can achieve the needs of the patients.
The Graduate-level nurse would also be involved in the implantation stage. At this stage the focus is on the coding of the program and moving the components and data from the old system to the new system. The focus of the leaders at this level is to ensure that the technocrats can ensure the security and the data of the patients during the process of transfer (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality). As a nurse leader, one should understand that integrity of the patient’s information is paramount. The leaders should thus make it clear to the development team achieves this requirement.
The last stage is the post-implementation level. The focus of this level is to fine-tune the system to boost performance. The nurse can thus focus on making changes to the system in order to accommodate the intricate needs of the patients.
While the development of a new system might involve several issues that the nurse leaders might not understand the most crucial focus is to achieve the needs of the patients. The nurse should thus focus on steering the team towards understanding the various issues that affect patients and how the new system can mitigate these problems. It is through such an approach that the nurse leader can become an essential part of using technology to make changes in the health care system.

References
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (n.d.a). Health IT evaluation toolkit and evaluation measures quick reference guide. Retrieved September 27, 2018, from https://healthit.ahrq.gov/health-it-tools-and-resources/evaluation-resources/health-it-evaluation-toolkit-and-evaluation-measures-quick-reference
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (n.d.b). Workflow assessment for health IT toolkit. Retrieved September 27, 2018, from https://healthit.ahrq.gov/health-it-tools-and-resources/evaluation-resources/workflow-assessment-health-it-toolkit
Locsin, R. C. (2017). The co-existence of technology and caring in the theory of technological competency as caring in nursing. The Journal of Medical Investigation, 64(1.2), 160-164.
Louis, I. (2011, August 17). Systems development life cycle (SDLC) [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpyjPrpyX8
McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2017). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Risling, T. (2017). Educating the nurses of 2025: Technology trends of the next decade. Nurse education in practice, 22, 89-92.

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