Nursing Informatics Application as A Tool for Evidence Based Community Practice: Issues and Challenges

Nursing informatics is a field of nursing that incorporates nursing, computer, and information sciences to maintain and develop medical data and systems to support the practice of nursing, and to improve patient care outcomes. Therefore, this paper aimed at assessing the issues and challenges arising from Nursing Informatics application as a tool for evidence based community nursing practice. An extensive literature search was performed and data were sourced from the internet databases Pubmed, Google Scholar, Science Direct, Government Agencies, Public Libraries, Educational Institutions and Commercial Information sources. The four steps of Nursing Informatics Progression Theory which are Assimilation, Acceptance, Application, and Advancement were adapted in this study. It was concluded that the use of technology (NI) can be beneficial in triage, enabling the community nurse to be more productive and to provide a better nursing experience to the patient. It can change the triage process and has the potential to increasingly improve care but can be hindered by legacy technology systems and inter-operability issues, in addition to issues of the digital divide, which means that some patients might access care easily, while others might have difficulties. It was recommended among others that ICT should be incorporated into schools of nursing curriculum to encourage competency before graduating from their schools.

Keywords: Application, Nursing Informatics, Evidence-Based, Community Practice,