The role of nurses in enabling change was at the forefront when the Nursing Informatics Position Paper had its Victorian launch with the Australian College of Nursing (ACN) last week. HISA was represented at the Monash Health-hosted launch by Dr Josie Di Donato and the Nursing Informatics Australia (NIA) special interest group of HISA was represented by Tasneem Islam.
HISA’s Dr Josie Di Donato told the audience the paper was crafted by three bodies – ACN, HISA and NIA. She said “we consulted our respective communities to ensure we got it right. This process took approximately six months although the seed for this paper was planted 18 months ago”. She said the paper aimed to:
- Empower nurses with the courage to act decisively in digital health;
- Engage nurses in conversation about the transformative power of digital health
- Enable nurse to act as change agents
Dr Di Donato said HISA encouraged nurses to use the position paper to perform their own self-appraisal.
“Assess your own state of readiness for digital health. How confident are you in your clinical practice that you can use digital tools effectively? Use the position paper to do a health check on your organisation in relation to the 7 elements. What’s the gap and what steps are needed to address? Use the position paper to assess what has been the learning – and tell us — so we can write it up as a case study. We want this position paper to stand the test of time.”
She asked the group to provide feedback on any new and revised content for future iterations of the paper.
Pictured at the launch event: Australian College of Nursing CEO Kylie Ward, Monash Health Chief Nursing & Midwifery Officer Cheyne Chalmers, Monash Health Chief Nursing Information Officer Naomi Dobroff, HISA advocacy lead Dr Josie Di Donato and NIA representative and RN Tasneem Islam.