Within the US healthcare system, an important consideration for decision-makers is the understanding of protection and safety of healthcare information. Mostly, when scholars discuss information security of privacy in healthcare settings, they related it to HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) that ensures patients’ confidentiality of their information (Egbert, 2016). For example, Langarizadeh (2017) describes confidentiality as an obligation of healthcare professionals who have an access to patient’s records or communication to keep their private information safe. This obligation can also been observed in the American Health Information Management Association Code of Ethics that describes the right of a patient to privacy. This confidentiality doctrine is also acknowledged by laws in the US to create a good relationship between nurses and patients. Moreover, in terms of privacy, scholars define it separately from confidentiality as a right of a patient or a group to make vital decisions regarding sharing their personal information with other parties (Wilier, 2017). Again, HIPPA Privacy Law plays a vital role that helps to establish national standards for health and information privacy in the country. This implies that the privacy advocacy provides patients with some elements of control including a right to retrieve their own data and request nurses to amend it to provide the most accurate data.
Another important concept is security that is directly related to patient’s protection in a healthcare organization. For instance, in old days, the security concept was applied in paper form in locked file cabinets. As the use of health informatics and electronic health records increased, automatic patient billing became a widespread trend. Again, the HIPPA Security Rule provides national standards to help nurses protect patients’ vital information (Pantell, 2020). The HIPPA emphasises on safeguarding patients’ private information in a digital format that prohibits breaches of confidentiality and security.
Since the informatics specialists’ nurses earn more than average nurses, according to a research by Langarizadeh (2017), the average salary of an informatics nurse is $ 102,230 per year. This means that an informatics nurse can earn up to $49.15 in one hour that is a great earning potential for these individuals to make a difference to an organization. Even though some critics may argue that hiring such nurses may increase wages expense of a hospital, however, the value they provide may supersede the costs incurred to hire and retain such skilled nurses. Therefore, the hospital should ope nursing informatics roles to professionals from a variety of backgrounds and improve their clinical workflows through nursing knowledge.
The information technology nurses can collaborate with teams to implement and learn new technology and improve patient care outcomes organization-wide. For instance, these nurses can help to integrate their clinical as well as IT knowledge to solve the problem of knowledge gap in the hospital. As long as they have the expert knowledge of IT systems and databases, they can tackle most challenges such as database schema administration and design. Moreover, they can make a career change transition to move in as a healthcare informatics specialist instead of an average-rated nurse. With their existing medical skills, they can make a significant difference in a medical organization (Goodman, 2020).
Although a career in health informative is lucrative and rewarding, it also comes with some challenges. For instance, nurses have to deal with data security challenges in health informatics because information stored in cloud servers can be vulnerable (Hübner,2016). Moreover, malware and viruses may also infect the laptops and systems of hospitals with patients’ information. Nurses should take care to protect their passwords and also face problems when they teach the use of tools to a nurse without IT background.
Nurses can have great career in informatics. They often have to work through various patient records using information technology. However, if some nurses are hired specifically for their information technology skills in a healthcare organization, they can focus their care on the integration of health informatics in clinical practices and help practitioners achieve better patient care outcomes. This means that there are several career options opened for inform
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