Nursing Informatics Course

Lesson 1 • Defining Nursing Informatics

Covers the official definition, scope, and history of nursing informatics. Anchors all subsequent learning in a shared professional vocabulary.

Lesson 2 • Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom

Explains the DIKW hierarchy as the conceptual backbone of informatics practice. Students apply the model to real nursing scenarios.

Lesson 3 • Roles of the Nurse Informaticist

Describes career roles including analyst, educator, project manager, and CNIO. Connects role selection to individual competency gaps identified earlier.

Lesson 1 • EHR Core Components and Modules

Identifies essential EHR modules: clinical documentation, CPOE, medication management, and scheduling. Students map modules to nursing workflow touchpoints.

Lesson 2 • Navigating EHR Interfaces

Develops hands-on navigation skills for common EHR interface patterns. Reduces cognitive load during clinical use through practised efficiency.

Lesson 3 • Architecture of Health Information Systems

Explains client-server, cloud, and hybrid HIS architectures. Connects system design choices to clinical workflow performance and data integrity.

Lesson 4 • Evaluating EHR Usability

Applies usability heuristics and satisfaction surveys to assess EHR design quality. Connects poor usability to nurse burnout and documentation errors.

Lesson 1 • Health Data Exchange Standards

Explains HL7 v2, HL7 FHIR, and CDA messaging standards for data exchange. Students trace a clinical message through its exchange lifecycle.

Lesson 2 • Clinical Terminology Systems

Introduces SNOMED CT, LOINC, ICD, and nursing-specific terminologies. Students match terminology systems to appropriate clinical documentation contexts.

Lesson 3 • APIs and Data Integration

Introduces REST APIs and SMART on FHIR for clinical application integration. Students understand how apps connect to EHR data without deep coding knowledge.

Lesson 1 • Privacy Regulations and Compliance

Covers patient privacy rights, minimum necessary standards, and consent frameworks. Students identify compliance gaps in sample clinical scenarios.

Lesson 2 • Access Controls and Authentication

Covers role-based access control, multi-factor authentication, and audit logging. Students configure appropriate access levels for sample clinical roles.

Lesson 3 • Breach Response and Incident Management

Outlines breach detection, notification timelines, and containment procedures. Students practise a tabletop breach response exercise.

Lesson 4 • Ethical Dimensions of Health Data Use

Examines data ownership, algorithmic bias, and secondary data use ethics. Connects ethical frameworks to real informatics decision-making scenarios.

Lesson 1 • Workflow Analysis Techniques

Applies process mapping, time-motion studies, and swimlane diagrams to clinical workflows. Identifies inefficiencies that CDS tools can address.

Lesson 2 • Principles of Clinical Decision Support

Defines CDS types: alerts, order sets, documentation templates, and dashboards. Students classify existing CDS tools by type and clinical purpose.

Lesson 3 • Order Sets and Care Pathways

Guides creation of evidence-based order sets and standardised care pathways within EHRs. Connects order set design to reduced clinical variation.

Lesson 4 • Designing Effective CDS Alerts

Covers alert fatigue causes, specificity tuning, and tiered alert severity design. Students redesign an over-alerting CDS rule to reduce fatigue.

Lesson 1 • Healthcare Data Sources and Repositories

Maps clinical, administrative, and claims data sources to their analytical uses. Students identify the right data source for a given QI question.

Lesson 2 • Data Visualisation for Clinical Audiences

Applies chart selection principles and dashboard design to clinical data storytelling. Students build a quality dashboard for a nursing unit.

Lesson 3 • Measuring and Reporting Outcomes

Defines process, outcome, and balancing measures and links them to nursing-sensitive indicators. Students build a measurement plan for a QI initiative.

Lesson 4 • Querying and Extracting Clinical Data

Introduces SQL basics and report-builder tools for extracting EHR data. Students write simple queries to answer clinical quality questions.

Lesson 1 • Training and End-User Adoption

Designs role-based training programmes and super-user networks to drive EHR adoption. Connects training design to sustained post-go-live performance.

Lesson 2 • Stakeholder Engagement and Communication

Identifies stakeholder mapping, communication planning, and executive briefing techniques. Students create a stakeholder register for a sample project.

Lesson 3 • Risk Management and Issue Resolution

Builds risk registers, mitigation plans, and escalation pathways for informatics projects. Students conduct a risk assessment on a provided project scenario.

Lesson 4 • Change Management Models in Healthcare

Applies Kotter, ADKAR, and Lewin models to EHR and informatics change initiatives. Students select and justify a model for a given change scenario.

Lesson 1 • Strategic Planning for Health IT

Applies SWOT, environmental scanning, and portfolio management to health IT strategy. Students align an informatics roadmap to organisational strategic goals.

Lesson 2 • Policy Advocacy and Regulatory Influence

Equips nurses to engage in health IT policy processes at organisational and national levels. Students draft a policy brief on a current informatics issue.

Lesson 3 • Informatics Governance Structures

Explains IT governance committees, steering councils, and shared decision-making models. Students design a governance charter for a nursing informatics committee.

Lesson 4 • Evaluating Emerging Health Technologies

Provides a framework for assessing AI, telehealth, wearables, and genomic tools for clinical adoption. Students score a new technology using an evidence-based rubric.