Articles
1. Discuss the importance of strategies to optimize security of health information
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (2013) outlines some of the most essential strategies that health practitioners and hospitals need to adapt in order to optimize the security of their health information. There is need to ensure that patients are provided with electronic copies of their health information once they present the request to the hospital administrators. There is also need to ensure that the electronic health information is highly protected and maintained using the certified EHR technology available by using the appropriate strategies. The first strategy is to ensure the prevention of unauthorized access to patients’ information. This can be attained by the administrators issuing unique and special user names and passwords to the staff members using the electronic health records. The importance of this is to avoid any cases of altering patients’ information and drug names that may cause confusion resulting to medical errors. The second strategy is that of using encrypted technology to protect the health records of patients. This is important as it ensures that only the authorized staff with user keys can access and read the information whenever it is stored in other forms of devices. Backing up the information on the system is another strategy that ensures the information can be recovered in case there is data loss from cyber attacks or fires.
2. Explain why information and technology skills are essential for safe patient care
First and foremost (Regan, 2012) took note that information and technology skills are essential in data collection, analysis, interpretation of findings and applications. To do these, she argues that the nurses must have skills in administration, communication, data assessment, documentation, education, monitoring, basic desktop software and operating systems. These skills are essential for patient safety because they mitigate the high chances of medical errors and support the process of decision making. They are also essential because they help to ensure that the high levels of privacy and security of health information is maintained. This is essential in building patient-doctor/nurse relationship trust. This increases the willingness of patients to disclose their medical information in confidence (Regan, 2012).
References
Regan, M. (2012). Nursing, information and computer science: Building blocks of nursing informatics. Retrieved from http://www.aacn.nche.edu/qsen-informatics/2012- workshop/presentations/regan/QSEN-DDW-Regan.pdf
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. (2013). Guide to privacy and security of health information. Retrieved from http://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/privacy/privacy-and-security-guide.pdf
