Enhancing perioperative nursing effectiveness through informatics.
The science of nursing informatics is becoming increasingly important to delivering quality nursing care to all patient populations. Perioperative nursing informatics skills are practiced within the context of powerful and complex information systems that enhance nurses' ability to view and report clinical data in a manner that has never before been possible. This article explores how the analysis of several examples of two typical system indicators (i.e., the unplanned returns to surgery rate within the same admission event, surgical site infection rate) can result in improved patient outcomes. Nursing informatics is an invaluable tool for identifying trends and communicating them to perioperative nurses in a way that can positively influence the delivery of perioperative care and patient outcomes.