Factors of nursing knowledge on health care informatics.

              Nursing knowledge is the means by which the whole purpose of caring for patients is achieved because it underpins what we actually do. It is what defines us as nurses as opposed to similar professions such as doctors or physiotherapists, and helps to differentiate us from lay carers or care support workers. Knowledge is basically what classifies us as a profession because having a ‘unique body of knowledge’ is one of the things that defines a profession in society. For individual nurses today there are practical reasons for identifying nursing knowledge. With increasing accountability there is a growing expectation that nurses explore their profession’s beliefs, discarding those without merit and consequently developing adequate knowledge to care for their patients in a competent manner. Nursing knowledge will, for example, enable them to justify actions or indeed stop unsafe or poor practices. Nursing knowledge can literally mean the difference between life and death for some patients.

  

   Nursing Informatics (NI) is the application of computer science and information science to nursing. NI promotes the generation, management and processing of relevant data in order to use information and develop knowledge that supports nursing in all practice domains.  "Nurses, in all domains of practice and at all levels, must be "technology literate" to be able to participate in decision making and evaluation of these systems - systems that should support them in information management, knowledge development and evaluation of new ways of practicing....Evidence-based practice in all practice domains requires competencies in informatics." (Hebert, 1999).