THE ROLE OF THE

NURSE EXECUTIVE IN
INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY
DECISION MAKING
INTRODUCTION
helps nurse executives understand the delicate
interplay of nursing and outcome data inside the
healthcare organization and beyond—to the regulator
and payer worlds.
 every patient care decision can have a life-and-death
implication.
 timely communication of accurate data plays such a critical
role in healthcare delivery.
INTRODUCTION
 Flawed thinking
 Technology’s lifecycle
 Multilayered decision-making
 Nurse informaticist role
 Two key areas of expertise
 Standardization lacking
 Nurse executives marginalized
 New frontier: Social media
FLAWED THINKING
 Most nurse executives view technology-related decision-
making.
 . Technology selections and deployments
 Financial reimbursement
TECHNOLOGY’S LIFECYCLE
(1) Planning
(2) Procurement
(3) Deployment
(4) Management
(5) Support
(6) Disposition
(7) Only to cycle back to planning
MULTILAYERED DECISION-
MAKING
(1) Cultural
(2) Economic
(3) Social
(4) Physical requirements
NURSE INFORMATICIST ROLE
 evaluate, select, and deploy these advanced technologies requires one of two things
 (1) Either a deep personal and nursing-centric knowledge of technology
 (2) Or access to that knowledge, which is resident in a technology expert
. TWO KEY AREAS OF
EXPERTISE
 Nurse executives and NIs involved in technology decision
making need to leverage two specific type of IT expertise
when they evaluate, select, and implement clinical
information systems
 (1) Process mapping
 (2) Workflow design
STANDARDIZATION LACKING
essential to nurse executives’ evaluation and
selection of clinical information systems (Simpson,
2012)
NURSE EXECUTIVES
MARGINALIZED
 the nurse executives found their review responsibilities
limited to the functional level; that is, looking at the
systems’ features, rather than their ability to advance
nursing practice
 nurse executives explained that CMO-led physician
contingents regularly dominated IT decisionmaking,
relegating nurse executives to a “specifier/ recommender”
role
NEW FRONTIER: SOCIAL
MEDIA
Nurse executives’ awareness of societal and
technological trends, issues, and new developments
as they relate to the clinical practice of nursing.
 Nurse executives’ awareness of legal and ethical
issues related to client data, information, and
confidentiality