Nurse managers play a key role in healthcare reform efforts by guiding the implementation and use of new technologies like electronic health records to increase efficiency and reduce costs. As healthcare organizations collect more patient data every day, nurse managers must develop knowledge worker skills to properly analyze the large amounts of information and apply the findings to improve patient care delivery and outcomes on their units. Nurse managers work with informatics nurses and their own staff to determine what specific data should be prioritized and how technology can best support the unique needs of each patient care area.

1. Ruby Joy B. Pareñas
BSN- III Adam
Nurse managers as knowledge
workers
Healthcare reform's emphasis on improved access, increased
quality, and decreased costs is focusing particular attention on the
use of technology and the development of electronic systems for
data collection and analysis. As increasing healthcare costs are
highlighted by the media, the national strategy for decreasing these
costs is almost unanimously touted as implementation of electronic
health records (EHRs) and technologies that will increase
healthcare efficiency and prevent service delivery fraud and
redundancy.
Much of the challenge of matching technologies to specific
patient-care units or service lines is guided by nurse managers and
their staff. Although informatics nurses are helpful in
conceptualizing and managing data entry and analysis systems, it's
the nurse manager and nursing staff who determine which data can
be most useful in guiding patient-care delivery and ensuring
positive patient outcomes. Nursing units are collecting more and
more data on a daily basis and nurse managers and their staff
members need to begin now to develop knowledge worker skills to
ensure accurate data collection, reliable methods of analysis, and
logical findings and conclusions.