E-health and IT nursing to enjoy a day in the bay
Published: 28 January 2009
A one day event will take place on the 11th March 2009 at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff on how to use data to develop nursing knowledge, nursing practice, and patient safety and quality of care.
This event focuses on the outstanding work of Dr Norma Lang who is an internationally renowned expert in establishing methods to measure nursing quality and a pioneer in the field of quality assurance in nursing. The programme will include sessions on nursing education for e-health and linking nursing clinical decision-making with e-health.
The RCN has published standards for the nursing content of electronic patient records, and a simple "benchmarking" tool to assess whether systems and technologies are "SAFE" i.e. that they conform to Standards, that they are Acceptable to nurses and patients, that they are Fit for purpose (i.e. that they support nursing practice as well as medical practice since the two are qualitatively different), and that they are Evidence based. Within Wales the RCN is campaigning for the Welsh Assembly Government to ensure that Informing Healthcare incorporates RCN standards in the systems being introduced across Wales.
In addition it is calling for the government to ensure that the development of eHealth is included into the performance targets of NHS health organisations and that appropriate hardware devices are available for mobile and community staff.
To realise the potential of eHealth, there needs to be full involvement of nurses in these developments, investment in appropriate hardware to ensure access by mobile and community based staff, and much greater investment in education and training for nurses at all levels.
For further information on the E-Health conference a Day in the Bay, please contact the event organiser: Pat Anslow, RCN Events, on 02920 546492 or email: pat.anslow@rcn.org.uk