Nursing is the science of caring. When I first had the interest to be a nurse, my interest was in helping other people. The use of technological solutions was not a core focus for me to pursue my nursing education and preparation. 

When electronic health records (EHRs) began to enter into the nursing care practice, we as nurses started to see a shift in how visible technology was in care delivery. Charting went from paper based records to electronic based records. 

However, technology has always been a part of care delivery. 

Consider the stethoscope. Is that a technology? 

What about the blood pressure cuff or the oxygen saturation monitor? 

Technology has always been a part of nursing care delivery. However, how we use technology and to what extent has increased tremendously over the last two decades. 

To help support the integration of technology into nursing care, we have nurses who specialize in the use of technology. The nursing specialization is called nursing informatics....

Happy Spring Ahead Sunday!

This morning I woke up to the sun out and that was refreshing! The last several weeks have been so cold and dreary that the brightness shining through the window made for an already pleasant start to the day. After a brief walk this morning I was not ready to jump into anything yet. I decided to watch a video seminar that had been recommended to me on the topic of Compassionate Technology. 

I was intrigued by the combination of the term compassionate within technology. Compassionate Care is a common term in nursing and healthcare. Anyone involved in the human aspect of healthcare has to have a compassionate side to his/her/their self. However this was a first for me to see the word compassionate paired within technology. Technology tends to have a rigid, forceful, direct, and binary connotation when first introduced. 

Putting those two terms together caught my attention in the context of nursing and healthcare delivery. As nurses and healthcare professiona...

I was on a phone call last week discussing nursing, nursing informatics, and healthcare overall. During the conversation, I started to chuckle a bit and say that I do not get overly excited about spending hours each day sending and responding to emails. (I imagine that many of you can relate to this as well). However, I rarely look at emails as the goal. 

Instead, my mind is focused on the purpose of the email(s) and who I am connecting with or being connected to in an effort to help advance the work toward that collective goal. If email, phone calls, video calls, or other mechanisms help to reach that, then so be it. 

When projects get busy and time gets tight with timelines and milestones, our ability to think beyond the current moment gets a bit more challenging in the day to day. Yet, consider all of the people who you are helping through your diligent efforts and dedication to the details that working in nursing, health IT and informatics requires of you. 

We use many mechanism...

Certified Nurses Day is coming soon on March 19th, less than 1 month away!

Perhaps you are board certified in nursing informatics or another certification in nursing. There are 12 specialty certifications in nursing with informatics nursing being one of those 12 available through the American Nurses Credentialing Center  (ANCC). 

Informatics nursing has been a specialty certification since 1995, nearly 30 years now. Nursing informatics was initially recognized as a specialty nursing practice in 1992 after decades of pioneering by nurses. 

In the 1990's the use of digital health tools were quite limited in nursing care delivery. Yet, there was a strong vision for the future for what was to come. 

Today, we are living in the digital age with continual need for improvements and refinement to address the data, information, knowledge, and wisdom needs of nurses, doctors, patients, families and the entire health care team. 

As we look toward the future the American Medical Informatics A...

Happy Sunday!

Perhaps it is the optimist in me but when we reach February, I know Spring is coming soon. (Now keep in mind that I live in the Northeast where it gets quite cold). However, I am looking ahead into the future while living in the present. 

I see this optimistic and future oriented perspective present in how I've approached professional endeavors in the past as well. Nearly 20 years ago now, I opted for a clinical analyst role in an Information Technology (IT) department to work on an Electronic Health Record (EHR) project. 

I wanted to take on a new role in nursing that would allow me to help other nurses who are caring for patients. While I had limited IT knowledge, I had strong clinical nursing knowledge and experience to support the design of the EHR. 

However, in making that shift away from the bedside, I ran into some resistance from others. I would hear directly and indirectly that I had "gone to the dark side". I also would on occasion hear that I was no longer ...

Yesterday, I ran a 5K starting and ending at the Boston Common and Public Garden. This was a flat course up and down Commonwealth Ave! A very Bostonian scenic tour by foot if you will.

As I was running the race, I kept a close eye on my pace via my Apple Watch. I wanted to reach a sub 11 minute mile and knew it would be a challenge for me. So, the frequent checks to my watch kept me informed about how I was doing along the 3.1 mile course. 

I tracked the distance to see how much longer I would mentally need to prepare for at the pace. 

I watched my heart rate to see where it fell as I was starting to feel like it was getting hard to keep up with that pace. 

I also analyzed my results after finishing to see how I did across the three miles in terms of a pace. (I ended up at a 11 minute, 7 second average pace). 

Then last night, I reviewed my last several months of speed in a longitudinal manner. 

I am sharing all of this with you because we now have more data and information avail...

Happy Saturday all!

I am writing to share with you an important update from the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) regarding how to display your board certification in nursing informatics. 

Earlier this month, ANCC sent out a communication that the board certification designation (BC) had changed for the nursing informatics that hold this certification. 

Now, instead of signing your name as RN-BC, the Nursing Informatics board certification is designated as NI-BC. 

So, for example, I will adjust my signature line to now be: 

Tiffany Kelley PhD MBA RN NI-BC 

ANCC encourages you to make this update to your email signature lines, business cards, badges and any other place where that may need to be adjusted to reflect this new change. You may read that direct communication from ANCC that I received here. 

If you are not yet board certified in nursing informatics but are interested in preparing for the exam, consider our NICER Program for your review needs. Details can be fo...

Every time I start to try to explain informatics to someone, especially someone in nursing and healthcare, I use the two terms of heart rate and pulse as an initial example. 

At the surface, a nurse or healthcare professional might consider these to be the same thing, just different expressions for what the beats per minute are for one's heart. 

Yet, to someone who is not a nurse or healthcare professional, these are two different words so why would they necessarily mean the same thing? 

This is especially true of those who work on developing health IT systems. Heart rate and pulse are two discrete terms. 

So what is the implication of having two different terms that could mean the same thing? 

The impact of having two different terms that may mean the same thing is that someone, likely someone within a nursing and clinical informatics role, needs to decipher the semantical difference (if any) between these two terms. 

This is a simple example but is one that should have you thin...

Artificial Intelligence, commonly referred to as AI is a term that has taken on new levels of buzz in the mainstream across industries. ChatGPT from OpenAI seems to have accelerated our discussion of advanced artificial intelligence digital technologies in healthcare. 

However, we must remember the same principles we use to assess, design, develop, test, implement, adopt, optimize and maintain new healthcare technologies when considering AI tools. 

Technologies in healthcare must be are available to support rather than lead us in how we deliver care. To do so requires that we, nurses, doctors and all members of the healthcare team (e.g, including patients) are knowledgeable about artificial intelligence to be able to envision how it can support areas of our information needs that we cannot accomplish on our own. 

I was recently interviewed on AI for Nurse Journal in a piece entitled, "How AI can transform nursing practice". You can read that piece here. Of the areas where I was quot...

ANCC released its updated test content outline for the Informatics Nurse board exam on May 3rd 2023. Many have been awaiting this new information (originally expected in December 22 and then June 23) to know what new content and/or changes may occur. 

I was surprised to see it come a month earlier than expected but we got to work and began reviewing the differences in the previous exam content and framework with that of the new exam. 

Some good news to consider for those that have been actively preparing - everything you've been preparing for still applies. There may just be some additions you need to include in your study plan. 

Some differences include: 

1. The exam is now 150 questions (instead of 175 questions). We anticipate this means that your time available during the test is also cut a bit short (likely 3 hours from 3.5 hours). There are 25 practice questions that are not counted toward your score in this 150 questions. However, you will not be able to detect which is a gr...