A Review of Nursing Informatics on Nursing Education

Abstract

Introduction: Integration of scientific knowledge and data into health care information processing is the core concept of nursing informatics. Nursing informatics has continued to impact nursing education concerning technological advancements, which have paved the way for contemporary changes in nursing education. Objective: To identify advantages, possible disadvantages, required skills and recognize the parts of informatics in designing educational purposes in nursing education. Methods: A literature search from 1998 to 2022 was conducted using the keywords “nursing”, “education”, and “informatics” on electronic databases; Google scholar, PubMed, and Science Direct. Twenty-five articles were selected from 3704 articles for reporting the findings Results: Identified benefits of adopting informatics into an education system are; reducing medical errors, improving telenursing and health promotion relevant to clinical practice, nursing shift management, comprehensive delivery methods of teaching, and improving nursing research. Possible disadvantages of using informatics are; impairment in critical thinking, time taken for data entering, and deficiency in pre-requisite skills. The use of informatics in nursing education requires skills in information literacy, evidence-based nursing, communication, cooperation, teamwork, problem solving, self-assessment, nursing competencies, the reflection of nursing, and peer support of nursing students. Integral parts of an informatics-based information system include a visual interface, course materials, assessment tests, use of technology software in audio-video courses, editing of recordings, referencing with instructional media or hyperlinks in finalizing interactions, obtaining feedback, and testing the overall operation. Conclusions: Findings suggest that more benefits can be gained through the incorporation of informatics into nursing education compared to its possible disadvantages. The role of informatics in nursing education is vital in developing students’ education with the changing trends of highly advanced technology. Further reforms such as formulating user-friendly interfaces, software and hardware application training, informatics knowledge, and skill training programs are required to improve the successive use of informatics in nursing education.