A week in the life of an Informatics Lead Nurse: Thursday

Read about day 4 of Roda Luz Trinidad's week in her life.

I am a critical care nurse at heart, and I see to it that our intensive care unit (ICU) nurses across the trust have a seat at the table and that their voices are heard. This is how I spend a lot of my day on a Thursday. Keep reading to find out more.

We recently started the Critical Care Nursing Informatics group to ensure that the lessons we learned from the past digitisation project is utilised for our next Go-Live. On this meeting, we invited the digital lead nurse from another organisation to demonstrate the system they use and share their experience throughout their digital transformation. This was very useful and really inspired the team to be more engaged in our own digital journey. 

A big part of my role is education. I make time to support the site education team and practice development nurses with their health care certificate programme, pre-registration students and newly qualified nurses. Today I am meeting and teaching the new nurses in the paediatric areas. The focus is on how to safely and accurately use the electronic health records (EHRs) to document the care they provide and answer their questions and concerns. As new nurses, they will be the future leaders in health care system, so it is vital that they know the standards and are aware of information governance and policies surrounding EHRs. 

Every Thursday afternoon, we have our trust nursing informatics meeting headed by our chief nursing informatics officer (CNIO). Most times we have site check-ins and talk about plans and the next phase of our digital transformation strategy. Today is a longer meeting for learning.

We have the lead for information governance (IG) talking to us about secure and safe data sharing. I worked closely with our system analyst to develop a live report to help the ward managers and senior nurses to have a bird's eye-view of the nursing safety indicators per ward every morning. This would be actionable data that would influence practice, support the nurses, and ensure patients receive the care they need. The IG lead suggested a few solutions to ensure Digital Clinical Safety.

Another guest speaker is the research and data science team. They came to talk to us about data science programme and how they can help support the WeConnectBH team drive information requirements to influence decisions and practice. The question given to us was "Is there anything in your daily work that you consider a 'bugbear' and would like to improve?". I am very excited about the prospects of working on a project and at the same time finding solutions to make things better! Watch this space.

A quick call from a clinician asking for help on a blocked drug chart and blocked smartcard. Remote support provided by directing him to the pharmacy team and signposting to the smartcard unblocking service user-guide. 

On my way home, I was able to squeeze in a podcast from the leadership log on "Imposter Syndrome". Often I doubt myself as a leader and felt that my skills and what I do are not enough. This podcast made me realise that it is alright to not be confident all the time, but it is essential to always be myself, have a positive affirmation that I am good enough and to know that my work is valued and that I make positive contributions to the team and to celebrate my own and the team's success and achievements.