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

Read about day 2 of Roda Luz Trinidad's week in her life.

The second part of my 'week in the life' series focusses on Tuesday. I have a few monthly meetings happening on a Tuesday. Keep reading to find out more about my role as a Informatics Lead Nurse.

The peri-op informatics steering group taking the first steps in getting their department digital is one of them. 

We are making headway with a discussion of the findings on our last visit to another Trust using the same electronic patient record (EPR) system as ours. The team was very clear on what are the absolute essentials, nice to haves and what we need for our own system. My take-away action from this meeting is to start getting more nursing engagement, by identifying digital champions who can drive the change forward and be part of the transformation team. 

A short break is immediately followed by the Trust Clinical Informatics Board. We talked about our digital strategy and plan for the next year aligned with What Good Looks Like Framework. We also have the maternity team showcasing their objectives and strategies as a newly established maternity informatics team. 

I cover a big hospital and I make sure that I spend some time walking the wards every day, meeting the clinical staff, talking to subject matter experts, listening to their feedback, and supporting them in their workflow. It's always great to see the "little light bulb moment" on their faces when I show them some top tips and troubleshooting tricks in millennium or give them updates on system development and take their ideas to the board for consideration.

I am a member of the National Digital Shared Professional Decision-Making Council. Each member shares their work experience and learning through our digital minute and supporting each other on quality innovation projects. This time, we had Chief Nursing Information Officer for NHS England, Natasha Phillips, join us as a call for action to be involved in The Phillips Ives Nursing and Midwifery Review.

Off to another meeting after a quick break. I recently got invited to the discharge digitisation project for the hospital. We have a group of empowered staff from across the multidisciplinary team (MDT), keen on improving our patient flow and get the patients Home First/discharge to assess using digital health records. We talked about including the complex discharge workflow, repatriation, and referral to the integrated discharge hub. Now, time for me to go home.