Last month, our quick poll asked readers if they had the luxury of working on just one of many competing work demands for a day, what would get their immediate attention. The choices were care coordination, financial analysis, new technology processes for care delivery and business analysis, patient, family and other stakeholder engagement, privacy & security safeguards, and quality, safety & efficiency initiatives.
Given incentives in recent healthcare reform bills, I expected technology and financial imperatives to top the list. To my surprise, patient, family and other stakeholder engagement garnered 40% of the vote, with care coordination second at 30%. New technology processes for care delivery and business analysis was only chosen by 20%, while only 10% chose quality, safety & efficiency and no one chose privacy & security safeguards. The focus for those who took the survey was clearly on nursing’s core mission – caring for people; however, I expected these areas to be well under control by nurse leaders, not needing a day long focus.
A day long focus on harnessing the full potential of rapidly emerging and changing technological innovations to improve patient care services and provider and patient satisfaction seemed to be needed. This led to reflection on how Web 2.0’s capacity for “social” media and networking is also becoming part of our work environment.
Please email JONAEditor@aol.com and tell me how much access to the Internet your nurses are allowed, what tools they are allowed to use, how Web 2.0 resources are used in your organization to improve patient care, increase communication with stakeholders, recruit and engage staff, build brand, any policies you have related privacy/confidentiality, etc. I’ll summarize the ideas received in a future editorial.
Enjoy this issue’s content; check out the featured articles, editor's picks, most viewed and emailed, and take the new quick poll that asks readers to indicate content delivery preferences. Remember there are many ways you can customize the site, including saved searches, personal article collections, e-mail, and RSS alerts. You also have the capability to export references into your favorite citation manager. To have full, unrestricted access to all the site’s easy-to-use features, click the “Register” button located at the top right corner of the website. Enter your subscriber account number that appears on your journal label above your name.
Finally, the “collections” tab contains 3 groups of a few articles related to education for administration, financial issues, and technology. If you would like to see other collections’ topics from JONA, let me know. And, remember you can also build your own collections related to your work and research.
- Suzanne P. Smith, EdD, RN, FAAN, Editor-in-Chief