Nursing Informaticist Interview

Interview with Informaticist
Introduction
With the ever increasing utilization of technology, the nursing informaticist are an integral member of the health care team. The nurse informaticist (NI) assists in the integration of technology in the management of data, information, and knowledge, to enhance patient care and assure current practices are efficient and effective (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015). Moreover, the NI is pivotal in the successful amalgamation of technology into the clinical setting. The American Nurses Association supports the specialty of nursing informatics. Nursing informatics is a burgeoning field that assists organizations in the successful integration of technology to enhance safe, quality patient care (Aathi, 2014)
Nurse Informaticist
Ginger Banks, RN, BSN, MBA, Nurse Informaticist possesses numerous years’ experience in both bedside nursing and nursing informatics. Ms. Banks has participated in the development, implementation, upgrade, and maintenance of numerous health information system projects. In addition, Ms. Banks is an adjunct professor of nursing at Northwest Christian University. Ms. Banks graciously hosted me in her home for our interview, the purpose of which was to enlighten me regarding nursing informatics.
Use of Patient Care Technologies
Banks (personal communication, March 19, 2016): Here’s an example; Infection Control collects data regarding all of the infections acquired in hospital patients. They then analyze the data to see if the patient had the infection when they came to the hospital or acquired it while hospitalized. If the infection control nurses see a trend, such as multiple patients with urinary tract infections, they then can use the information gathered from their data analysis and dig deeper to see if there is additional commonality amongst those patients. Once the root cause of the infections is found, say maybe it’s the type of catheter, an action plan to assure this doesn’t continue can be