Advantages
Nursing information systems are beneficial in several nursing roles, including managerial roles, coordination of activities, performing physician-delegated tasks, and tendering to any other requirements of the patient. Some of the reasons why information systems are helpful to the nursing discipline are as follows.
Better Staff Management
NIS provides an efficient way to handle administrative activities like workload management, maintaining staff records, scheduling shifts, etc. In addition, the tasks accomplished by each nurse can be recorded, and such shift reports can be reviewed in a patient-specific manner. It also aids nurse administrators in assessing staffing requirements, as well as financial management through budgeting and monitoring of expenses.
Improved Documentation
Proper clinical documentation is the pillar of every health care system, and NIS provides an easy way to record all the necessary data, in a systematic and uniform way. The data may include drugs to be administered and their dosage and time; schedule of medical tests and their results; and relevant vital parameters of the patient like daily records of body temperature, blood pressure, etc. NIS reduces the need for redundant paperwork, and also enables maintaining patient history that can be easily accessed when required.
Efficient Decision-making
In addition to storing data, certain features of NIS enable information management and decision-making through active and passive systems. Passive systems can organize and format the data according to preset parameters, as well as provide parameter-specific information, as and when required. Active systems are a step advanced and suggest diagnoses on the basis of predefined criteria applied to the patient information.
Enhanced Synchronization
Patient data generated in all the units is always essential for the decision-making in any unit of a medical facility. This can be achieved through the integration of NIS with other clinical systems, which enables fast and easy access of the documented information to all the appropriate units.