Nursing informatics is a healthcare specialty that “integrates nursing science,

Nursing informatics is a healthcare specialty that “integrates nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom” within the nursing practice (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2021, p. 7). In a hypothetical scenario, the use of electronic medical records (EMR) would greatly benefit the outpatient clinic I work with which cares for orthopedic clients. While the change from paper charting to electronic would be a huge undertaking, it would only improve the care we provide to our patients. With the use of an EMR system “demographics, office notes, assessments, radiology reports, laboratory reports, and orders” are all at a fingertip reach (Luan et al., 2023). This would allow providers, nurses, and radiology to have the patient they are caring for at that exact moment information readily available. This improves workflow which in turn could allow for a couple more patients to be seen or for employees to be able to go home to their families on time (Schoebaum & Carroll, 2021). This would make it more feasible for the healthcare team to do a chart review with the patient and update any changes while in the room. There are other benefits that include a 60% reduction in medication errors due to illegible handwriting, and unnecessary testing as all of the same kind of testing is located in the same location which in turn lowers healthcare costs (Hoover, 2017). This type of tool being made available to all employees would be able to prevent a costly mistake. Informatics is also a great tool used in the management side of healthcare. If you think about it the applications used by telephone, fax, instant messenger, and email all fall within the informatics department (Sweeney, 2017). All of these allow nursing managers to stay in touch with staff members and get information out as quickly as possible. With the medical world changing and evolving daily, having healthcare informatics is letting every one of us utilize the knowledge they are providing us with.