THE STRENGTH A NURSING INFORMATICS COUNCIL BRINGS TO THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ADVANCED CLINICAL APPLICATIONS
By Stephanie Klueh
A solid organizational/committee structure, strong project manager and good clinical analysts
are essential to the successful implementation of any Advanced Clinical Applications. Some
project milestones will include system design, parallel testing, end user training and LIVE
support. When implementing POM/OM, Nursing Documentation and EMar/BMV, we are touching all
clinicians throughout the hospital, whether they are entering or viewing data, performing
procedures or verifying medications.
Creating a Nursing Informatics Council to assist with these projects is valuable to all aspects
of your implementation. Bringing Nurses together, with the addition of some guests from the
ancillaries when needed, will ensure that system design is reviewed by each specialty. The group
will make recommendations regarding build, while keeping current policies and procedures in mind.
They will make suggestions for other policies and procedures that are needed with the addition of
new software and workflow processes. While they are assisting in all of these areas, they will be
learning how the system functions, how it will affect their everyday workflow and will know what
decisions were made along the way and why.
The Nursing Informatics Council should consist of one to two Nurses from each clinical area,
depending on the size of your hospital, and should be run by the Director of Nursing Informatics
or Nurse Informaticist and report to Nursing Leadership. Any recommendations the group makes that
needs additional approval, should go first to your project Core Team. Members of your project
Core Team will take these recommendations or issues to the appropriate committee when necessary.
Members of this group can meet on a bi-weekly or weekly basis depending on how close you are to
your LIVE date and which projects you have going on at the time.
The council can assist with parallel testing to help uncover workflow related issues, and
possibly some system bugs, that were not discovered during the design, build and testing phases.
This group can also help in providing much of the end user training. They will be ahead of the
game in that they assisted in design and workflow decisions and their peers will appreciate being
taught by someone they work alongside on a daily basis.
This group can also help in providing much of the end user training. After walking through the
formalized training a few times with them, they will be ready to train other clinicians. They are
experts because they assisted in design and workflow decisions and their peers will appreciate
being taught by someone they are familiar with on a daily basis. This group will also be able to
relay any feedback or issues to the project manager or project lead for resolution prior to LIVE
day.
Having 24/7 LIVE support for the Advanced Clinical Applications is vital to project success.
Leveraging this group of clinicians to assist in the front line support is invaluable. The group
will relay end user feedback and any workflow related issues that come up during the LIVE support
period and will be able to provide great recommendations for resolution.
There are many aspects to a successful Advanced Clinical Implementation. Creating a Nursing
Informatics Council is a great investment and will be appreciated by your organization. This
group can be used for the implementation of all of the Advanced Clinical Applications and can
assist in many aspects of these projects.
For more information on implementing Advanced Clinical Applications please call our office at
610-444-1233 or visit our website at www.getvitalized.com