After much ado...

I have returned. I've been busy finishing school and finding interesting stuff to talk about, since I've had a few adventures in technology in the past couple of years.

More to come...stay tuned!

New year, new job, new tech

It's not just the beginning of the school year for elementary and secondary students. It's also the start of a new year for me, as I'm going into my last full year as a master's student.

When I'm not going to school, I will be working as a telehealth nurse coordinator, to bring the benefits of telehealth technology to spinal cord injury/dysfunction patients throughout our service area. Telehealth is a global term which basically encompasses delivering health care via technology, whether it is via telephone, secure video conferencing or even text messaging.

Finally, this is a very exciting area of healthcare. I hope to learn more and pass it on.

The drought is over...

I'm hoping it is anyway! Greetings to all!

I'm happy to say I'm alive and kicking and busy, busy, busy as an informatics grad student. Hopefully, by this time next year, I'll be well into completing my last year.

Anyway, there are so many interesting things I could talk about, but this news item today in the New York Times about RSA SecureIDs nearly stopped me in my tracks. I used one of these for quite some time and yes, multifactor authentication is the way to go for logins, but this is scary.

Remember to use complex passwords and rotate them on a regular basis. If your system allows it, use special characters (note: these may be limited), numbers, as well as both upper and lower case letters. Also, do not use words commonly found in the dictionary or things easily found out about you (i.e. your address, phone number, birth date, etc.)

If necessary, create your own rotating password and vary the special characters and caps every three months or however necessary.

As they used to say on one old police show, "Let's be careful out there!"

What is nursing terminology?

I've spent a semester studying this and used some really great quotes to summarize what they are and why nursing must use terminologies to describe our work and bill appropriately for it. However, I believe Thede and Sewell state it most simply: "standardized terminology is a list of terms with agreed upon definitions so that when a term is used it means the same thing to everyone." This is even more important as electronic health records become the norm for patients.

Nursing care, contrary to popular belief, is not billed separately, as many specialties are, in your typical hospital bill. We fit right in there with the room rate and paper towels. While we work 24/7 to be the "eyes and ears" of your physician, who pops in and out, and actually do work ordered by them (which incidentally, is about 33-40% of your bill) and other folks, our work has yet to be specifically defined. Implementation of standardized terminologies and data sets aims to do this.

If after reading this little bit, you are still horribly confused, I highly recommend Thede and Sewell's book, Informatics and Nursing: Competencies and Applications. It's a great overall book to start with for any nursing and computers topic about which you might have questions.

Once you've read a few chapters and want to delve into the intricacies of what exactly those terminologies are, see the links below for the ANA(American Nurses Association) recognized terminologies.


NANDA-I (North American Nursing Diagnosis Association International)
http://www.nanda.org/

Omaha System
http://www.omahasystem.org/overview.html/

CCC (Clinical Care Classification)
http://www.sabacare.com/

ICNP (International Classification of Nursing Practice)
http://www.icn.ch/pillarsprograms/about-icnpr/

NIC (Nursing Intervention Classification)
http://www.nursing.uiowa.edu/excellence/nursing_knowledge/clinical_effectiveness/nic.htm

NOC (Nursing Outcome Classification)
http://www.nursing.uiowa.edu/excellence/nursing_knowledge/clinical
_effectiveness/noc.htm

PDNS (Perioperative Nursing Data Set)
http://www.aorn.org/PracticeResources/PNDSAndStandardizedPeriopera
tiveRecord/PNDSHistoryAndMission/

SNOMED-CT (Systemized NOmenclature of MEDicine)
http://www.ihtsdo.org/snomed-ct/

LOINC (Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes)
http://loinc.org/

ABC codes (ABC Coding Solutions -formerly Alternative Link)
http://www.alternativelink.com/ali/abc_codes/

Enjoy your explorations of nursing terminology!

Interesting WSJ article

Can Technology Cure Health Care? (from www.wsj.com)

Some say yes, some say no, but it will always be a debate, and an interesting one at that.
I found this article is interesting to read from a nursing perspective. No nurses appear to have been interviewed for this article.

A true pioneer

No COWs or WOWs would exist without this guy, or a couple of his friends.

My virtual tour --HIMSS

I mentioned the coverage of HIMSS10 earlier today, but I have to tell you, I thoroughly enjoyed attending via Better Health's coverage at UStream.

If you can't be there, you can interact with the folks at the booth via chat, and trust me, it's very interactive.

Many thanks to Dr. Val, Dr. Anonymous and the whole crew.