Nursing informatics (NI) is becoming more and more imperative in healthcare delivery. According to Baker (2012), nursing informatics is “˜”The integration of nursing, its information, and information management with information processing and communication technology to support the health of people word wide’. In other words, NI “˜encompasses the use of information technologies in relation to any functions that are within the sphere of nursing and that are carried out by nurses in the performance of their practice’. Bar codes are NI tools used to improve patient safety. This is an annotation summary of the article “˜Bar-code shortcuts lead to gaps in patient safety’ followed by a description of the intended audience, relationship with NI and the search strategy.
Drug Topics
Although barcodes have proved quiet helpful, nurses have unfortunately continued to introduce more chances of error. According to the article, nurses do “˜workarounds’ when doing car code scanning The article explains why bar code scanning has become very popular in the nursing industry. The author cites several reasons. Some include the fact that the right patient gets the right mediation not only at the right time but also through the required administration route. The article also enumerates the reasons that could lead to error. It cautions that nurses should not take short cuts but should use BCMA in the right way.
The article is targeted to the practitioners in the field of nursing. These include the nurses themselves, hospital administrators, the research community, colleagues and other stake holders. The article is evidence that healthcare is related to informatics. This is because according to Patterson, Rogers, & Render (2004), medical information is so massive that a whole information system can be made out of it. In addition, medical information, once organized into codes, can greatly ease the delivery of healthcare.
Search Strategy
The main article was obtained by typing the phrase “˜Patient Safety: Bar Code Scanning ebcohost’ in google. The intention was to get the required information from an online database. The article appeared as the first one in the search results. In searching the relationship between NI and bar code scanning, the investigation also focused on other resources searched through Google books..
Conclusion
There is no doubt that bar codes play a central role in reducing human error in medication administration. In order to effectively bring out the issues, the paper introduced the subject of informatics and its application in healthcare. This was followed by in summary, in form of annotation, of articles on bar code scanning. Thereafter, its relationship with NI was revisited, target audience specified and search strategy explained. It is clear that bar code scanning plays an important role in reducing errors in nursing.