1. Introduce yourself to the group. Include your graduate area (e.g., teaching, acute care NP, etc.).
My name is Gigi Whaley-Pryor. I am in the DNP-FNP program. I started the program as a part-time student in 2008. I want to work with patient populations that include women and children that are low income or part of migrant worker families. I live in Syracuse, Utah and enjoy not having to commute one way for an hour (on a good day) in order to get to my graduate intro to informatics class. Even though an online course is not my preferred choice for a learning medium, I can definitely appreciate not having to come up on campus every week during this summer.
2. Why do you as a graduate level nurse need to know about information management?
I need to know about information management because technology is part of our lives and technology is the vital connection within health care. We are moving towards a paperless system and I need to be able to function in such a system. I have worked mainly with paper charts and I need to learn how to synthesize this data into modern technology. IT is part of my future in Nursing. Perhaps after I graduate I may investigate Telehealth as a viable option to include within my practice. In order for me to develop the skills to become a Telehealth FNP to meet all of my patients' needs I will of course need to learn how to use technology if Telehealth is something I want to pursue. Thus, like it or not, this dinosaur (me) must step up and take a seat on the information highway and establish skills I have long avoided due to my computer anxiety.
3. Describe what is happeing related to IT in your clinical or practice setting.
I am currently working in a local psychiatric hospital as a charge nurse and we have minimal IT. A small percentage of our education is done on-line via the intranet. Hopefully, by the end of the summer we will have Best Notes added to our system. As I contemplate Nursing Informatics and Medical Informatics in general and all that President Obama is trying to do with health care reform, I know that IT is the key and connection that will push health care and practice to the next level and IT will reduce costs and IT will allow information to be connected between different providers. Much fear will need to be overcome in order for us to get to the next level. I have fears I need to overcome, such as fear of change and of the discomfort of the dreaded learning curve. I see fear when I discuss the technological changes that will happen in health care with neighbors and friends. They seem so scared of their personal information being exploited, and they are so hesitant of change in our broken and out-dated health care system. I see this fear and acceptance of the status quo at my little psychiatric hospital. This is how we are preventing ourselves from advancing in technology and all of technology's benefits. Thus, continued change via IT will impact all of health care and all of our society.
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Hi Gigi, nice to meet you. I hope we make online education one of your preferred methods of learning. I agree, you can't beat the commute or the dress code. In one of my online courses we had to describe our "classroom" (what equipment we used and our office, kitchen or back porch, that we worked from). A good friend, also in the class, posted in the discussion after me, the I had failed to mention the 5lb bag of M&Ms in my office, to which I replied "doesn't everyone study with M&Ms! I found the combination of online and classroom worked well for me as a student.
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