Nurses’ informatics competency assessment of health information system usage: a cross-sectional survey

Background: Nurses’ informatics competencies affect their use of health information systems (HIS). Informatics competencies are professional requirements for registered nurses to guarantee the quality of patient care. In earlier studies, these competencies have been defined rather intensively, although few studies exist relating to the evaluation of nurses’ practical informatics skills and competencies. The purpose of this study was to describe nurses’ perceptions of their informatics competencies regarding HIS usage in daily patient care. Methods: : A web-based questionnaire of this national cross-sectional survey was sent to all nurse members including registered nurses, midwives and public health nurses of the Finnish Nursing Association (FNA), the National Association of Health and Welfare Professionals (TEHY), and the National Professional Association for the interests of experts and managers in health care (TAJA) (N= 58 276). Results: : 3610 nurses responded to the questionnaire. The items (n = 16) relating to informatics competencies were grouped into three separate dependent variables: ‘Nursing documentation’, ‘Digital environment’ and ‘Ethics and data protection’. Nurses evaluated their overall informatics competencies as good. The ‘Ethics and data protection’ competency score was higher than the scores of ‘Nursing documentation’ or ‘Digital environment’. The competency ‘Digital environment’ was better for recently graduated nurses and for nurses working in outpatient care and virtual hospital, examination, operation, and labour, and in emergency rooms and emergency care. Experience with using a particular HIS at work was associated with the competency ‘Nursing documentation’. The general HIS experience was associated with all competencies. Conclusions: : Nurses are highly qualified HIS users. However, the competency requirements generated by rapidly expanding digitalization have challenged nurses. Thus, it is of high importance to increase different educational programs for nurses using digital tools and software programs. Nurses are knowledge workers 24/7. Unified, standardized, terminology-based nursing documentation has been shown to produce high-quality patient data which also affects patient safety. Therefore, nursing directors should be encouraged to implement nursing terminology in those health care organizations which have not yet done so.