Innovation in Transformative Nursing Leadership: Nursing Informatics Competencies and Roles

Abstract

In a recent brief to the Canadian Nurses Association's National Expert Commission on the Health of Our Nation, the Academy of Canadian Executive Nurses (ACEN) discussed leadership needs in the Canadian healthcare system, and promoted the pivotal role of nursing executives in transforming Canada's healthcare system into an integrated patient-centric system. Included among several recommendations was the need to develop innovative leadership competencies that enable nurse leaders to lead and advance transformative health system change. This paper focuses on an emerging "avant-garde executive leadership competency" recommended for today's health leaders to guide health system transformation. Specifically, this competency is articulated as "state of the art communication and technology savvy," and it implies linkages between nursing informatics competencies and transformational leadership roles for nurse executive. The authors of this paper propose that distinct nursing informatics competencies are required to augment traditional executive skills to support transformational outcomes of safe, integrated, high-quality care delivery through knowledge-driven care. International trends involving nursing informatics competencies and the evolution of new corporate informatics roles, such as chief nursing informatics officers (CNIOs), are demonstrating value and advanced transformational leadership as nursing executive roles that are informed by clinical data.

Understanding the use of standardized nursing terminology and classification systems in published research: A case study using the International Classification for Nursing Practice ®

“…First, healthcare leaders including nursing leaders often lack knowledge about the value of terminology and classification systems and therefore are not well equipped to advocate for its inclusion during clinical information system implementations. Efforts have begun to ensure that nursing leaders have developed informatics competencies to augment executive leadership skills (Remus & Kennedy, 2012). Entry to practice nursing informatics competencies have been developed and integrated into undergraduate nursing curriculum in Australia and Canada (Borycki & Foster, 2014).…”

Digital health technology: factors affecting implementation in nursing homes

“…The value of effective nurse leadership in implementing quality of care initiatives is cited in the literature. Effective nurse leadership involves nurse leaders ensuring that nurses possess the digital skills required to transform services (Remus and Kennedy 2012). Nursing home managers need to ensure that nurses are appropriately prepared and trained for leadership roles (Siegel and Sikma 2015).…”

“…Nursing leadership is fundamental to DHT innovation in nursing environments (Remus and Kennedy 2012), and change management in relation to digital innovation is known to benefit from clear processes (Kotter 1996). However, little is known about the factors that enable the effective implementation of DHT in nursing homes -although nurses are understood to have a crucial role in this (Weng et al 2015).…”

Instantiating informatics in nursing practice for integrated patient centred holistic models of care: a discussion paper

“…In particular, it is recognized that the nursing profession needs to integrate informatics into formal and informal education and training programs and translate this into competencies of current and future nurse leaders (Remus & Kennedy , CASN ). The nursing role in meeting the challenges of developing integrated models of care will face several obstacles which will have implications for the profession itself.…”