Using the Data / Information / Knowledge / Wisdom Continuum

Knowledge is one of the invaluable drivers of competent practice and improved health care delivery. The dynamic and complex nature of the modern health care system requires nurses to apply more knowledge and skills in resolving critical issues and providing patients with appropriate and quality care. Health care professionals apply diverse theoretical and practical knowledge perspectives in their roles to facilitate the accomplishment of the anticipated health care outcomes. Generation and application of new knowledge are strategic ways by which nurses perform their daily activities effectively. The search for knowledge revolves around a complex structure that includes observation and learning from other care providers, as well as the extraction of information from literature sources. This information is then analyzed comprehensively and integrated into processes aimed at developing relationships that foster practical application of the knowledge.

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Nursing Informatics Application

One of the primary roles of nursing informatics is to develop a base on which communication between care providers and patients can be conducted flawlessly. A nursing research question will be used to generate information that can help improve understanding on how the information continuum works (Ball, 2016). The research question selected for this project is whether there is a connection between noncompliance with hand hygiene and the spread of pathogenic microorganisms leading to nosocomial infections.

The ANA Code of Ethics obligates nurses to provide a high level of care to all patients to achieve better health outcome and reduce the risk of complications. Healthcare professionals understand their hands contains transient flora that leads to nosocomial infections. They also know that hand hygiene is the most effective way of eliminating the transient flora from their hands. Unfortunately, a significant proportion of health care professionals do not adhere to hand hygiene protocols (Pittet, Boyce, & Allegranzi, 2017). There is a need for research to understand why nurses do not comply with hand hygiene procedures despite having a clear understanding of its importance in the prevention of nosocomial infections. Research can also generate information concerning the prevalence of nosocomial infections in different health care units in addition to the risk factors and treatment of the infections.

The search for more information concerning nosocomial infections and hand hygiene can be conducted through electronic platforms or physical search in a library. Many people prefer to use electronic databases to generate articles containing information on the research topic. Some of the electronic databases that can be applied to generate articles with information on hand hygiene and nosocomial infections include CINAHL, EBSCOhost, PubMed, Medline, and Cochrane database. These databases were chosen since they contain a wide range of articles addressing health and nursing related issues. Most of the articles in these databases are peerreviewed hence applicable for academic purposes. A large number of journal articles contained in these databases provide lead information concerning hand hygiene, nursing practice, and other crucial healthcare issues. Some databases such as the CINAHL provide the researcher with an option of querying the association between the spread of pathogenic microorganisms, nosocomial infections, and hand hygiene. After identifying the most relevant databases, the other step is to identify a set of terminologies that can help to generate relevant journal articles. The primary aim of using search terms is to minimize the number of irrelevant articles generated during the search (Nelson & Staggers, 2014). Some of the search terms that can be applied in this paper include, hand hygiene, nosocomial infections, healthcare-acquired infections, compliance, and eradication of transient flora. Boolean terms can also be applied to broaden or narrow the literature search.

Extrapolation of discrete information would be one of the ways to generate relevant information concerning hand hygiene from the articles generated in the search (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2018). This shows that only articles addressing various aspects of hand hygiene and nosocomial infections will be considered for review. Reading the article summary or the abstracts is one of the recognized tactics for extracting articles with relevant information. In this case, reading the abstracts would facilitate the identification of the articles with information on the prevalence of nosocomial infections, the risk factors, suitable interventions, barriers to implementation of proposed interventions and the role of nurses in the fight against these infections.

Turning Information into Usable Knowledge

Turning information generated from previous research studies is one of the challenging activities in informatics. This process begins with a comprehensive assessment of the articles generated in the search. This information is then arranged into a conceptual framework for use in determining the relationship between various research variables (Nelson & Staggers, 2014). In certain cases, this information can be presented in the form of charts and graphs to reveal the presence of a connection between any of the research variables. Nurse leaders and nurse educators can apply this information in training nursing students in issues to do with hand hygiene (Ball, 2016).

Informatics to Increase Wisdom

It has been revealed that informatics can be applied as a platform for increasing knowledge amongst care providers. Additionally, Informatics can be applied by nurse practitioners to facilitate the development of professional competence, communication, and problem-solving skills (Nelson & Staggers, 2014). It is irrefutable that nursing informatics creates the base on which information obtained from a variety of sources can be combined to form a practical, theoretical perspective against complex human problems (Delaney et al., 2017).

It is irrefutable that the application of informatics to generate relevant information on hand hygiene is a practical way by which nurses promote the establishment of an infection-free environment (Delaney et al., 2017).

Nurses training and education on hand hygiene and nosocomial infections are some of the ways by which informatics can be used at the organizational level. Comprehensive training and educational programs on hand hygiene offer an effective way of sensitizing nurses and making them aware of hand hygiene (Pittet et al., 2017). During training, health care professionals are notified on the connection between handwashing and nosocomial infections.

Conclusion

Knowledge is one of the invaluable drivers of competent practice and improved health care delivery. Health care professionals apply diverse theoretical and practical knowledge perspectives in their roles to facilitate the accomplishment of the anticipated health care outcomes. This paper has highlighted some of the ways through which nursing informatics can be used to resolve hand hygiene noncompliance issues. The literature search is a typical example of how informatics can be applied in nursing research. Literature search and literature review helps to generate relevant information which is then analyzed comprehensively and integrated into processes aimed at developing relationships that foster the practical application of the knowledge