The purpose of creating a brochure (about Dengue Fever)....

Today in the IT class, we were asked to create a brochure about health promotion. So, I have decided to create a brochure about Dengue Fever.

What is the brochure about?
The brochure that I have created is all about dengue fever. In my brochure, I explained what exactly Dengue Fever is. I hope that the person that read my brochure can understand what is Dengue Fever. My brochure also include informations about the causes, the way of transmission, signs and symptoms, treatments, and preventions of Dengue Fever.

Why this brochure is created?
The main purpose I create this brochure is to give awareness to the public and community about the danger of Dengue Fever. Nowadays, there are people still do not realise when they got Dengue Fever. They might think that they just get simple fever that will recover by itself and will not affected their body much and will not bring any danger to life. So, through this brochure, i hope that people who read this brochure can know signs and symptoms about Dengue Fever. Besides, I also hope that people who read this brochure can understand how Dengue Fever is transmitted because many people do not realise that Dengue Fever is a communicable disease. It can spread within an area. It is important to know the ways to prevent Dengue Fever.

Who should read this brochure?
The brochure is created for everyone. Anyone who do not know what is Dengue Fever and wish to know more about Dengue Fever can read this brochure.

Where to get the brochure about health promotion?
Usually, this type of brochure can get from the hospital, pharmacy shop, health centre or clinic.

Article 3 (from e-journal portal UKM) : Retention and application of information technology skills among nursing and midwifery students

From this paper, I get to know that not every nursing or midwifery students wiil retain or apply the IT skill which acquired after attending the IT course. This paper presents the results of an investigation into the extent to which acquired IT skillsare retained and applied by undergraduate nursing and midwifery students participating in anintensive IT training course six months after the initial training period. I also get to know why this happen among the nursing or midwery students. Below is the abstract of the paper:

Abstract
Pre-registration nursing and midwifery students are under considerable pressure to acquire the necessary information technology (IT) skills by the time they embark on a professional nursing career. There is a multitude of research findings detailing the use of computer-based learning materials, IT training initiatives and how such materials are beneficial to learners. There is, however, relatively little in terms of the extent to which students are given the opportunity to use such skills during study periods over an extended period of time. This paper explores related issues by presenting the results of a study into the extent to which a cohort of undergraduate nursing and midwifery students retained and applied IT knowledge six months after the initial training period. The results reveal an interesting disparity between the skills taught and their retention and use in practice. Concerns are raised over the risk of such skills being forgotten by the time students enter professional nursing careers.

Article 2 (from e-journal portal UKM) : Benefits of nursing information systems: are there any?

This paper describes the background to and contents of a new publication jointly produced by the Department of Health and nurses from the British Computer Society Nursing Specialist Group. It describes the content of a monograph which is about whether nursing information system bring benefits or not.

Actually the purpose of implementing IT is to improve the quality care delivered by the nurses but due to the implementation of inappropriate systems, lack of training/education and unrealistic expectations of what information system and information technology can produce, this has turn out the end result to be unforeseen costs, unfulfilled promise, and a degree of disillusionment. This has been the reason of the monograph.

From the article, I get to know why it is important to have clear objectives set prior to implementation and precise and measurable expected benefits need to be defined when setting up the information system. I also get to know the process of benefits realisation, benefits from care planning functionality, benefits from workload functionality, benefits from workload functionality, benefits from rostering functionality and benefits from drug administration functionality which all involved the nuring informtion system.

In conclusion, every effort should be made to counteract the dearth of evidence to support the introduction of nursing information system. It is also important to make sure that the nursing information systems is bringing advantages but not burden.

Article 1 (from e-journal portal UKM) : Nurses and Informatics

We are so depending on information system in our daily life. It plays an important role in our daily life nowadays. We are living more easy and systematic because of the existence of information system. Why I say so? Banks, stock market, airline industry, factories, stores, schools and even in health industry are all using and depending on information system in order to function well, easy and systematically. Nurses are increasingly using information systems to assist them to fulfill this role in clinical practice, administration, research, and education.

In this article, it explains what is nursing first then it explains what informatics is. After that, it did explain the definitions of health informatics, medical informatics, and nursing informatics and how to differentiate among them. Health informatics has become the umbrella term encompassing medical, nursing, dental, and pharmacy informatics among others. Health informatics focuses attention on the recipient of care rather than on the discipline of the caregiver. It explains the nursing’s early role in medical informatics. The nurse’s early role in medical informatics was that of a consumer. It did explain how the nursing informatics develops and the impact of nursing informatics on nursing.

Nursing informatics has moved beyond merely the use of computers and is increasingly referring to the impact of information and information management on the discipline of nursing. Nurses form the largest group of health care professionals in any setting to have a health information system. When providing patient care, nurses make use of information management more often than any other group of health care professionals. The nursing profession is recognizing the potential of informatics to improve nursing practice and the quality of patient care.

After reading this article, I get more clear idea about nursing informatics. Nowadays, nurses are so relying on nursing informatics which are really saving much of nurses time and reduce the mistake that made by nurses such as during giving medications.

Searching articles using e-journal portal of UKM

This time, we were asked to search 3 articles using the e-journal portal of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia(UKM). E-journal portal of UKM had subscribed to many electronic journals to provide access to their students.

What is electronic journal(e-journal)?

Electronic journals are scholarly journals or magazines that can be accessed via electronic transmission. They are a specialized form of electronic document: they have the purpose of providing material for academic research and study, they are formatted approximately like printed journal articles, the metadata is entered into specialized databases, such as DOAJ or OACI as well as the databases for the discipline, and they are predominantly available through academic libraries and special libraries. Most commercial sites are subscription-based, or allow pay-per-view access. Many universities subscribe to electronic journals to provide access to their students and faculty, and it is generally also possible for individuals to subscribe. (abstracted from Wikipedia)

I have chosen few e-journals from the e-journal portal of UKM to search for the articles that related to my nursing and technology. The e-journal in the portal are categorise using Alphabetical Title Lists and categorise based on subjects such as Business Management/Economy, Computer/Engineering, Education/Psychology, General/Various Subjects, Information/Library Science, Law, Medical Science/Pharmacy/Dentistry, Science & Technology, Social Science/Linguistics and many more. The e-journal that I have chosen are Science Direct, SpringerLink, and Oxford Journal to search for the articles related to nursing and IT.

Actually, the ways to search article in the e-journal are more or less same as the ways to search article using the searching engine. I did use some of the techniques that I described in my previous post to search for the articles. For examples the Advance Search. I found out that using Advanced Search can find an articles that combine few topic or main points in one article.

The 3 articles that i found from the e-journal portal of UKM are:

1. Nurses and Informatics
2. Benefits of nursing information systems: are there any?
3. Retention and application of information technology skills among nursing and midwifery students

How do I search articles by using Internet?

On the second day of the IT class, we were asked to log in to a website called METAKU. It is a website that teach you how to search good articles using Internet. Actually before this, I never knew that there were techniques when searching for information or articles using Internet. After visiting METAKU, I realized that the way I search for articles in Internet are not that correct. The 3 articles that on my previous post are the articles that i search using the way that i learnt from METAKU.

Before that, the searching engine that i usually used to search for information are YAHOO (http://www.yahoo.com/) and GOOGLE(http://www.google.com/). But this time, I used a new searching engine which are ASK JEEVES(http://www.ask.com/).

I did try all the techniques for searching articles using searching engine that taught in the METAKU. The first technique, I try to recognise and find out all the key words that related to my topic or articles that I searching for. I try to write out the topic that i searching for in the fact form or in a question form. For example, the topic that i was asked to search are about information technology and nursing. So,when i search, i will write in this way: "The importance of information technology in nursing." or "Why information technology is important in nursing?". I did combine the key words that related to the topic in order to find more relevant and accurate articles.

The second technique, I did use the symbol " " when searching for articles. For example, "Information Technology" or "Nursing" or "Information Technology""Nursing". This technique help me find more accurate articles by decrease the numbers of the results articles if compared with not using the this symbol " ".

The third technique, I used the Advanced Search. In the Advanced Search, I can key in more and extra key words that relevant to the topic that I am searching for. This help me find more specific and accurate articles. This also save my time by reducing the results.

The forth technique, it is a technique that teach you how to search for image, audio file/mp3, video or document in pdf format or powerpoint. I did try to use this technique to search for document in pdf format or powerpoint and i found out that there were some good article were in this form.

The last one, it teach us how to open a new window or tab by not closing the previous page for reference. I used this so often because it is so convenient for me to choose the right article by open few articles in the same time.

Article 3: Nursing Informatics

What is Nursing Informatics? This is the first question that pop into my head after i saw the title of the article. Based on Wikipedia, there are various different definition of Nursing Informatics have been proposed. The most widely currently accepted definition comes from the International Medical Informatics Association - Nursing Informatics Special Interest Group adopted August 1998, Seoul, Korea:

"Nursing informatics is the integration of nursing, its information, and information management with information processing and communication technology, to support the health of people world wide."

A more recent definition of Nursing Informatics comes from the American Nurses Association's Scope and Standards for Nursing Informatics Practice (2008):

"Nursing Informatics is a specialty that integrates nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage and communicate data, information, knowledge and wisdom in nursing practice."

Based on this article, Nursing Informatics is the term that is used to describe the cross-functional interrelationship between nursing concepts, and information resources and technology. The article explained how the term evolved into two basic meanings in the last few years. The two basic meanings refer to the broad needs that all nurses have to be information savvy -- to be able to use information access tools, information technology resources, and computerized systems on the job and also refer nursing informatics as a nursing specialty. In this article, there are also few opinions and responses that collected from nurses about the impacts of the information age on their jobs.

After reading this article, I get some idea on how Nursing Informatics influence a nurse in the hospital and more understand what actually Nursing Informatics is.

For full article, you can visit this link: http://www.cabrillo.edu/~tsmalley/NrsgInformatics.html

For more definition of Nursing Informatics, you may visit this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nursing_informatics

Article 2: The nursing shortage: Can information technology help?

After reading this article, I realized that not only our country are shortage of nurse but also in other country. There are several causes that had caused this phenomenon to happen.

Some of the primary factors cited for the growing shortage include an aging workforce among registered nurses (RNs), a declining number of new nursing students, and dissatisfaction with current working conditions that leads nurses to leave the profession.

Some solutions of this phenomenon regarding to information technology has been discussed in this article. There were questions like "what can be done to remedy it? Is information technology (IT) one of the answers?" appear in the article. The main solution that had been suggested in this article is 'Employing Clinical Systems'. The benefits of this solutions are also mention in the article.

Employing Clinical Information Systems as a Solution

While the intensity and composition of an acute care nurse's workload can be overwhelming, clinical information systems allow nurses more flexibility. Based on the experiences of the thousands of nurses who use clinical IT systems daily, they are able to spend more time delivering patient care, spend less time documenting the care they provide, and feel more confident about the quality of that care. Clinical information systems eliminate duplicate tasks, help nurses reduce errors, and keep documentation to a minimum.

The ideal clinical solution distills information to the right care provider context, monitors the information so that it fits the acute-care clinical workflow, and provides access at the appropriate time to all professionals who need that information. It promotes critical thinking by changing the workflow from task-oriented to outcomes-focused. As a result, clinicians are confident about the care they provide, errors are greatly reduced, and executives and administrators get the information they need to fine-tune operations and ensure that the organization is in compliance with regulations and best practices guidelines.

Clinical IT solutions can provide these benefits:
* Point-of-care clinical documentation.
* Automated medication administration. Physician order entry.
* Clinical data repository.

In conclusion, clinical information systems can be one of those immediate actions that can help nurses feel more confident about the care they are delivering. In addition to preventing medical errors, streamlining workflow and communications, and reducing redundant data entry, these systems can have a lasting and positive effect on overall job satisfaction, providing a significant influence on retaining our invaluable nursing resources.

To understand more about the article, you may visit this link for full article:http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FSW/is_1_20/ai_n18613248

Article 1: Is Technology Improving Nursing Care?

This is an article abstracted from the Canadian Nurses Association(CNA) website. It is a news releases.

This is an article about the importance of technology in nursing. From the article, i find out why and how important is it of the technology in improving nursing care. This is also the first time i read about the word 'E-nursing'. I learn a lot of new informations about nursing in other country and how advance are they to make use of technology in providing nursing care. There is some information below that i abstracted from the article...

E-nursing, the use of information and communication technology in nursing, is revolutionizing the way nurses interact with patients, deliver care and communicate with colleagues.

"Equipment such as computer terminals on hospital units, laptops for community health nurses and personal digital assistants for charting at the bedside are as necessary as stethoscopes for health-care providers to do their jobs," says Deborah Tamlyn, president of CNA. "Information and communications technology is an integrated and essential part of health-care practice."

"Technological innovation has swept the globe, and nurses have accepted the challenge this evolution brings," says Lucille Auffrey, chief executive officer of CNA. "Today, nurses work in a variety of e-health programs such as tele-triage. They access online libraries and databases of clinical practice guidelines in their workplaces and interact with their peers in discussion groups over the Internet. Nurses are also involved in developing standards to implement electronic health records, and many nursing educational programs are now offered online."

In order to make the nurses and health career expert in the information technology, the CNA has launched NurseONE. It is one of the strategy that the CNA launched to improve the information technology skills and knowledge of nurses.

As part of its e-nursing strategy CNA launched NurseONE, the Canadian Nurses Portal, today. NurseONE (INF-Fusion in French) is personalized and interactive to help nurses in Canada and around the world care for their patients, manage their careers and connect with colleagues and experts with the click of a mouse. NurseONE supports the depth and breath of nursing in all practice settings – clinical, education, administration and research.

To get more information about this article, you may visit this link for full article: http://www.cna-aiic.ca/CNA/news/releases/public_release_e.aspx?id=205