Nursing Clinical Information System(N-CIS)

Brief Description:

Currently there are no CIS designed specifically for collecting and analysing nursing notes. This results in poor availability of patient notes and poor understanding of the work activities of nurses and thereby the training and educational needs of the profession. An effective N-CIS  would be one that behaved much like a WRIS system that allowed extraction of appropriate data from a host clinical information system and then permitted data entry of notes and automatic computation of  codes for the reported work in a standard nursing classification. Suitable classifications would be the Nursing Interventions Classifications  (NIC) and the Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC).

Project Aims:

The two aims of this project are:

• 1. to design a mock version of an N-CIS for appraisal of the idea,
• 2.  to demonstrate a basic version of NIC & NOC coders

Project Objectives:

 The objectives of this project are:

• 1. demonstrate the value of nursing classifications for describing the nature of the nurse's work,
• 2. identify the issues in bringing into operation a Nursing WRIS using NIC & NOC

Brief Project Methodology:

The methodology is

1. Identify the clinical information systems that contain nursing data, or alternatively a context in which a new Nursing Information System would be a substantial advantage,

2. Identify a small group of nurses to specify their processing needs.

3. Design a Nursing WRIS or Nursing-CIS to support this identified group.

4.  Implement the designed system.

5. Test and evaluate the system with trusted staff and develop methods for operationalising the system.

6. Train all staff to use the system.

7. Collect feedback on the use of the system and ways to improve it.

How will this Project improve Patient Care:

This project will directly improve patient care through:

Increased staff communication and documentation across health providers.

Development of standardised care plans by expert clinicians for all staff access.

Detailed prescriptive optimized care plans/instructional materials available for ‘hands on' staff.