Overview
Welcome to Nursing 322: Nursing Informatics. In this course you will explore the use of informatics in nursing practice and its role in enhancing client care. You will gain an appreciation of the competencies required of an expert knowledge worker and apply the relevance of those competencies to your day-to-day practice as a nurse. You will also examine issues related to the protection of the privacy, confidentiality, and security of health information and consider the potential utility of a wide array of social networking tools in communicating health-related information.
Outline
NURS 322 comprises ten units. Each unit includes a list of learning outcomes, recommended readings, and related learning activities.
- Unit 1: What is Nursing Informatics?
- Unit 2: Information & Communication Technologies
- Unit 3: Navigating the Digital Library
- Unit 4: Protection of Personal Health Information
- Unit 5: Electronic Health Record
- Unit 6: Clinical Information Standards
- Unit 7: Clinical Decision Support Tools
- Unit 8: Telehealth
- Unit 9: Consumer Health Informatics
- Unit 10: Social Media
Learning outcomes
After completing Nursing 322: Nursing Informatics, you will be able to meet or exceed the following learning outcomes as you:
- appreciate the concept of nurse as knowledge worker and apply digital literacy competencies in your day-to-day practice;
- use information and communication technologies and consider how these can be used to enhance client care;
- explore healthcare information systems and electronic health records and examine their use in the delivery of nursing care;
- explain the need for protection of privacy, confidentiality and security in the collection and use of health information;
- examine the use of Telehealth to deliver health care at a distance; and
- investigate the utility of social media within the contexts of consumer health information, client education, and professional practice.
Evaluation
To receive credit for NURS 322, students must complete and submit all of the required assignments, including conference participation, and achieve a composite grade of at least C (64 percent). All papers submitted must follow the guidelines of the current APA publication manual.
The assignments and weighting of the composite grade is as follows:
| Activity | Weight |
| Assignment 1 - Postcard From the Future (Paper) | 20% |
| Assignment 2 - Appropriate Use of Health Information (Paper) | 30% |
| Assignment 3 - Website Critique (Paper) | 30% |
| Assignment 4 - Conference Forum Participation | 20% |
| Total | 100% |
To learn more about assignments and examinations, please refer to Athabasca University’s online Calendar.
Materials
This course either does not have a course package or the textbooks are open-source material and available to students at no cost. This course has a Course Administration and Technology Fee, but students are not charged the Course Materials Fee.
NURS 322 does not have a hard copy course package. There is no printed textbook required for this course. All of the materials you require for NURS 322 are accessed online through your AU student access. In addition, multimedia resources (print, audio, and video) are part of the learning activities in the course. Many of these learning resources are Open Educational Resources (OER), which are online resources available to all without cost.