| Summary: | The computer is becoming a routine tool in the nursing workplace. This offers nurses the opportunity to use the Internet to access evidence based information to support care giving, information to support their patients manage their health, and a range of systems for efficient record keeping and quality enhancement. To achieve this nurses need a variety of skills and knowledge, including information governance. A mixed methods longitudinal study was undertaken with a cohort of student nurses to explore how ready, willing and able they were to engage with the nursing informatics agenda, and the factors that affected this. The students in this research were found to have quite poor computer skills at the start of the course. There was low use of applications, and the use was unsophisticated. Students were unaware of the skills required and were unable to assess their own skill levels. The students considered that computers were important for nurses and were a good information source for patients, and expressed a willingness to engage with them during their course. The support received in practice varied between, and within, organisations. The most frequent scenario was that the qualified nurses supporting students had poor skills, low awareness of nursing informatics and did not encourage the students to use computers. Nursing informatics needs to be explicitly and consistently included in preregistration nursing courses. This needs to be supported by academic staff with nursing informatics expertise in order to provide support for integrating nursing informatics into both theory and practice elements of the student's education. A model for nursing informatics in pre-registration education is proposed. The aim being to break out of a vicious circle of poor awareness of nursing informatics in the university based elements of the course, and a lack of interest in practice leading to students being unaware of the scope of nursing informatics, and socialised into a nursing model that does not value nursing informatics. This can be achieved by creating an upwards spiral, building on the students willingness to engage, ensuring that they develop nursing informatics expertise and are ready to use it in practice thus providing positive role models for future students.
|
|---|
