Healthcare Informatics in Primary Care Pediatrics

The focus of this assignment is to increase your knowledge and understanding of how informatics, specifically the electronic medical record, improves the pediatric patient health outcomes. Caring for the pediatric patient has unique elements that are not applicable in the adult population. Examples are growth and development surveillance, vaccine records, transitional changes that affect “normal findings” by age group. For example, the normal respiratory rate of a newborn is significantly different from a 10-year-old. Additionally, pediatric healthcare providers are expected to educate parents with “anticipatory guidance” according to the age of the patient. For this assignment, you are expected to analyze the utilization of the EMR that you are using in your clinical practicum and evaluate how this particular EMR system is improving health outcomes. For example, does the EMR that you are using have mechanisms in place that track growth and development, which has led to early identification of abnormals?

This assignment has three parts. The first part is identifying the recommended pediatric-specific functionalities of the EMR system you are using. The template will guide you through the first part of the assignment by addressing a sample of key functionalities.

Part 2 addresses some basic functions that would be recommended in any non-specific EMR.

Part 3 asks you to discuss how your system is addressing certain outcomes such as safety, collaboration, and the prevention of medication errors.

Download and complete the assignment template.

Answer  preview

Pediatric nurse practitioners (PNP) focus on delivering positive health outcomes for children while operating in different fields in health organizations, including wellness, education, critical care, and oncology.  They dedicate their efforts to improving the treatment outcomes of the children. They play a fundamental goal in collecting, analyzing, and interpreting health records of the children under their care. With the introduction and advancement of informatics in the health sector, there is an improvement in delivering quality and timely health services in pediatric specialties (Demiris, & Kneale, 2015).  Initially, PNP relied on the paperwork system to create, share, interpret, integrate, and store patients’ health and medical information, which facilitated errors and tedious and time-consuming.  In specific, the introduction of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) allows PNPs to track the children’s development trend, transitional changes, and evaluation of the vaccine records.

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