Professional Experience Placement

This paper about embedding nursing informatics into undergraduate nursing courses by Cummings et al (2016) discusses the quandary for nursing informatics (NI) in Australian education. The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Council that is vested with accrediting nursing courses mandated in 2012 that all new courses needed to include nursing informatics. As these courses are now being rolled out there has been a need for guidance from NI leadership about how to ensure students are equipped with foundation knowledge and skills in the use of informatics at graduation. The recent release of the ANMF competency standards for nursing informatics provides direction for nurses about the expectations of the profession in this subject.  However, these competencies are guidelines are not ratified.  The authors of this paper describe the process used to embed NI into an undergraduate curriculum. The release of the Registered Nurse Standards for Practice that were implemented on 1 June 2016, provide further impetus for leadership by nurses to ensure NI is enabled at an organisation and systems level within healthcare settings.

Deployment of mobile technology and learning by Mather & Cummings (2016) builds on the issue of policy development and leadership by nurses in enabling NI to be come integrated into the work of nurses and become as ubiquitous as a stethascope. As previously mentioned here is a need for NI to be part of the curriculum, then further scaffolded during professional experience and worked integrated learning.  Appropriate behaviour needs to be modelled by registered nurses and nurse supervisors or clinical facilitators and they also need to be appropriately educationally prepared to assist students in appropriate and safe behaviour.  Then by graduation the next generation of nurses will be work-ready and prepared to be role models and resources for those less tech savvy or resistant to opportunities to change the culture of access to information that may improve patient outcomes.

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