Evaluation of the nursing informatics competency among nursing students: A systematic review.

AIM

This study aims to evaluate the nursing students' informatics competency reported in the literature.

BACKGROUND

Nursing informatics competency holds immense significance in the modern healthcare landscape, making it a vital requirement for nursing students before they graduate and embark on their professional careers. Nurses should integrate evidence-based nursing informatics (NI) into routine procedures to manage acute and chronic illnesses due to the increased complexity of the nursing profession and the healthcare systems.

DESIGN

A systematic review.

METHODS

PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and EMBASE were searched till December 2023 for any relevant studies evaluating the nursing informatics competency among students.

RESULTS

In this systematic review of 13 articles, the nursing informatics seems to be familiar among nursing students. Most of the included participants were generally competent, with an average total nursing informatics competency score of 3.4. In addition, they reported good scores for the clinical informatics role (Mean = 2.63), attitude (M= 3.7), basic computer knowledge and skills (M= 3.9), applied computer skills (M= 2.5), and wireless device skills (M= 3.2). However, these results were limited due to the use of structurally different assessment tools and their different cutoff values.

CONCLUSION

Nursing informatics competency has a great impact on the quality of services provided by healthcare systems. It is affected by several factors, such as the student's previous computer experience and the curricular and extracurricular exposure to informatics knowledge and skills. The available literature lacks a precise judgment on the competency of nursing students. But it seems to vary from fair to good among them. So, it is recommended to include nursing informatics as an obligatory course rather than an elective in the nursing baccalaureate. This helps prepare future nurses with the required knowledge and skills for better clinical decision-making.

Informations de copyright

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Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.