Impact of Health Informatics on Nursing Practice

The Assignment: (4-5 pages not including the title and reference page)

In a 4- to 5-page project proposal written to the leadership of your healthcare organization, propose a nursing informatics project for your organization that you advocate to improve patient outcomes or patient-care efficiency. Your project proposal should include the following:Impact of Health Informatics on Nursing Practice

Describe the project you propose.

Identify the stakeholders impacted by this project.

Explain the patient outcome(s) or patient-care efficiencies this project is aimed at improving and explain how this improvement would occur. Be specific and provide examples.

Identify the technologies required to implement this project and explain why.

Identify the project team (by roles) and explain how you would incorporate the nurse informatics in the project team.

Use APA format and include a title page and reference page.

Use the Safe Assign Drafts to check your match percentage before submitting your work.

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Project Proposal: Nurse Education Program to Combat the Opioid Epidemic Crisis

Describe the project you propose

The project recognizes that there is an opioid epidemic crisis and seeks to address this through a nurse education program. Despite previous reassurances from the pharmaceutical companies that patients would not become addicted to opioid pain relievers, the reality is that patients are becoming addicted and medical personnel have had to prescribe them at greater rates. The increased opioid medication prescriptions have been linked with widespread misuse of prescription opioids. Efforts to control these trends have managed to somewhat control patients’ access to prescription opioids, but increased public use of non-prescription opioids thereby indicating that opioids are highly addictive. Statistics reveal that more than 130 people die in America every day from opioid related overdoses with 10.3 million reported to abuse prescription opioids in 2018 (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2020).

The opioid epidemic crisis in the USA has received much attention with different strategies applied as solutions. Some of the solutions include the medication assisted treatment (MAT) that is part of the opiate treatment program (OTP), safer prescribing policies, and availing naloxone for treatment. While these interventions are supported with evidence, they have mixed results (Painter, 2017). Given these efforts that are already in place and their mixed results, the present project seeks to engage nurses in patient education programs targeting populations at high risk of being addicted to prescription opioids. The program will target the population of patients who visit the medical facility. As part of the program, nurses engaged in pain management will be subjected to an education program on opioid crisis management, with the program focusing on strategies for safe prescriptions, understanding the journey from opioid use to addiction, prescription considerations for chronic pain, acute pain management for opioid addicts, and nurses’ role in preventing prescription opioid abuse and diversion. The knowledge acquired by nurses during the education program will then be used to educate patients with the expectation of reduced opioid prescription rates as well as reduced incidences of prescription opioid abuse and addiction among patients (Raingruber, 2017).

Identify the stakeholders impacted by this project.

The project focuses on the opioid epidemic crisis and intends to improve the capacity of nurses to intervene. Five groups of stakeholders are impacted by the project. The first group of stakeholders are patients. They rely on opioids to manage their pain and yet it presents misuse and addiction concerns. They have become more knowledgeable about the opioid crisis and have access to other sources of opioids to include illegal opioid sources such as heroine. Lack of support from patients could result in the project failing as they could simply acquire opioids from other sources thereby subverting the project. There is a need to inform patients about the project since it has implications for their health and pain management. The second group of stakeholders are medical personnel who include nurses, physicians and other professions. They would be interested in the project as it has implications for their pain management capacities in terms of influencing the prescribing and patient education approaches. Getting their support is important as they would be implementing the project by educating patients (Garcia-Dia, 2019). The third group of stakeholders is leaders and organizations who would be required to invest in and support the project. The concepts presented in the project require their supported to be implemented in the organization. Their commitment and action is necessary to ensure that the project has the required support and resources to proceed. The fourth group of stakeholders is the academic community. They would be interested in the concepts presented in the project and its outcomes as it informs new knowledge about management of the opioid epidemic crisis. In addition, the results of the project can be applied to inform curriculum development in knowing what medical personnel should be taught as part of their preparation to handle safe opioid prescription management needs. The final group of stakeholders are licensing, regulatory and accrediting bodies who would be interested in the project as its results enable them to implement appropriate practice standards for ensuring patient safety. Additionally, the project results would be useful in guiding oversight (Garcia-Dia, 2019). Impact of Health Informatics on Nursing Practice

Explain the patient outcome(s) or patient-care efficiencies this project is aimed at improving and explain how this improvement would occur.

The project seeks to reduce the use of prescription opioids among patients without increasing the use of non-prescription opioids. It recognizes that the opioid epidemic crisis has partly been caused by opioid prescription practices that have made opioids dependent on opioids. While medical personnel such as nurses recognize this concern, they are not well equipped to handle the concern. Towards this end, the project seeks to improve the knowledge levels of medical personnel to handle safe prescribing needs in terms of ensuring that patients use opioid medication as prescribed and those who become addicted receive treatment. Ultimately, the goal of the project is to reduce opioid use among patients in managing pain to include both prescription and non-prescription opioids (Truglio-Londrigan & Lewenson, 2018).

Identify the technologies required to implement this project and explain why.

The project will require technologies for educating nurses. This will include training materials such as trainers, posters, presentations and notes. In addition, the project will require access to medical records as presented in electronics systems. Access to the records is important for evaluating the results of the project in terms of opioid medication use rates, and incidences of opioid misuse/addiction. Besides that, data analysis software will be required to evaluate the collected data and present trends indicating the effects of the project (Garcia-Dia, 2019).

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Identify the project team (by roles) and explain how you would incorporate the nurse informaticist in the project team.

The project team will have five members. The first member is the project manager. This individual will be responsible for planning for project activities and resources, organizing and motivating the project team, controlling project activities and time management, developing the project budget, ensuring that stakeholders are satisfied with the project, and monitoring the progress of the project. The second member is the communication liaison officer who is responsible for managing all communication elements of the project with other stakeholders. This member will be responsible for communicating with the organization’s management about the project intentions, progress and needs. In addition, this member will be responsible for facilitating access to medical records and ensuring that the access to conforms to existing information use policies. The third member is the project champion while will be responsible for getting stakeholders to support the project. Also, this member will be responsible for communicating their concerns about the project (Garcia-Dia, 2019). The fourth member is a training analyst who is responsible for preparing the training material and training nurses in the project. This member is required to have expertise on training delivery, to include excellent communication and interpersonal skills. The final member is a nurse informaticist who would be responsible for all data management activities that include identifying and meeting the project’s data needs, conducting data analysis, and communicating the project results in easy to understand terms (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2018).

Conclusion

One must accept that the opioid epidemic crisis presents a concern because opioids are highly addictive yet a necessary medication for pain management. In addition, one must acknowledge that efforts to control access to opioid pain medication is hampared by availability of non-prescription opioid substances such as heroin from illegal sources. To address this concern, a range of programs have been adopted to include MAT in OTP, safer prescribing policies and use of naloxone. The project seeks to add to the efforts by subjecting nurses to an education program focusing on safe prescriptions, understanding the journey from opioid use to addiction, prescription considerations for chronic pain, acute pain management for opioid addicts, and nurses’ role in preventing prescription opioid abuse and diversion. Nurses subjected to education program are epected to educate patients with the expectation of reduced opioid prescription rates as well as reduced incidences of prescription opioid abuse and addiction among patients. Towards this end, the project seeks to improve the knowledge levels of medical personnel to handle safe prescribing needs in terms of ensuring that patients use opioid medication as prescribed and those who become addicted receive treatment. Five groups of stakeholders will be engaged since they are impacted by the project: patients, medical personnel, leaders and organizations, academic community, and are licensing, regulatory and accrediting bodies. The project will make use of technology in the education approaches, to include access to medical records, training materials, and data analysis software. The project would be managed by five members who include a project manager, communication liaison officer, project champion, training analyst, and nurse informaticist. Impact of Health Informatics on Nursing Practice

References

Garcia-Dia, M. (2019). Project Management in Nursing Informatics. Springer Publishing Company.

McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. (2018). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4^th ed.). Jones and Bartlett Learning.

Painter, S. G. (2017). Opiate Crisis and Healthcare Reform in America: A Review for Nurses. OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 22(2), Manuscript 3. DOI: 10.3912/OJIN.Vol22No02Man03. https://ojin.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/ANAMarketplace/ANAPeriodicals/OJIN/TableofContents/Vol-22-2017/No2-May-2017/Opiate-Crisis-and-Healthcare-Reform-in-America.html

Raingruber, B. (2017). Contemporary Health Promotion in Nursing Practice (2^nd ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC.

Truglio-Londrigan, M., & Lewenson, S. (Eds.) (2018). Public Health Nursing: Practicing Population-Based Care (3^rd ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC.

US Department of Health and Human Services (2020. About the Epidemic: What is the US Opioid Epidemic? https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the-epidemic/index.html

Impact of Health Informatics on Nursing Practice