HIMSS and HERSS

April 15, 2015 -- My newest nurse hero: Patricia Sengstack DNP, RN-BC, CPHIMS. At HIMSS15 in a presentation (like me, Patty was in the audience) about Continuity of Care, we were shown a diagram of the organizational structure that implements it. The box labeled Management Team contained only CMO/CMIO. That's code for "doctors run the show." Oh my! Patty leapt in: "Excuse me, please attend Informatics 101: you need CNO/CNIO in that box, too!"

There is no excuse for omitting RNs from the IT implementation teams for EMRs and other tech that impacts our work. It is indeed Informatics 101... And so many have yet to learn it.

There's plenty of supporting evidence, for example regarding a hot topic today, population health: a survey showed that some people think that nurses are actually useful when implementing HIT. "60 percent of respondents feel that informatics nurses play a key role..." Nurses are useful? Who knew?

But what about those other 40%? What are those folks thinking? Have they ever met a nurse? How about a nurse informaticist? We in this job role must be from Mars. Can we trust this report? After all, nobody uses EMRs more than do nurses... Not even close. Do you suppose heavy usage entitles us to claim some expertise? Might we possibly be what these C-level folks call stakeholders?

Hello, world? Listen to Patty!

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