- TN005 Assessment The Nurse Leader and the SDLC.
Part 1. The Systems Development Life Cycle for Implementation
Regarding the ongoing advancements in the healthcare field, both informatics and technology have become critical components to improve the quality of care and outcomes in their interactions with patients. The Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a vitally important framework employed when addressing nursing informatics projects; it governs the orderly process of establishing and integrating new systems (Hauschild et al., 2022).
Nurse Leaders in SDLC
Nurse leaders are involved at each phase of the Systems Development Life Cycle to ensure the developed systems support and integrate with the clinical care environments. The details of this assignment focus on the role of the nurse leaders in SDLC and offer a concrete job/role description of a graduate-level nurse working within the context of a new nursing documentation system project implementation team.
The SDLC refers to handling projects, especially information system development and implementation. It comprises several phases to ensure the system is appropriately implemented into the business. These stages are Planning, Analysis, Design, Implementation/Construction, Testing/Integration, and Maintenance (Hauschild et al., 2022). Each stage calls for intense focus and discussion among heads of nursing, alongside working with other stakeholders, to ensure that implementing the system properly fits the healthcare environment in question.
Planning and Defining Requirements
All project plan participants’ roles and responsibilities are determined in the planning stage. Pre-planning is where feasibility studies, determination of resources needed, and how much time is available are made.
Nurse leaders are involved in managing the expectations since they give insights into the clinical requirements and the achievable ones. For instance, they could pinpoint certain documentation needs the new system should serve to strengthen patient treatment (Dutal, 2023). By engaging the nurse leaders in the planning stage, the project team can make the system a viable solution, given that it has to work in a real-life clinical environment.
Analysis
In the analysis stage, the system’s user feedback, which determines specific needs for the system, will be incorporated into the IWorkflow. Nurse leaders also participate through their real-time and internal insights into practice settings and patient care processes.
They can demonstrate where changes may be needed or emphasize that the specific aspects and methods of the system as a working tool match the motions of clinical life. For instance, they can indicate the required features, such as minimizing clients’ time searching for their records and optimizing the data entry processes (Dutal, 2023). It remains a critical stage due to the setting of the systems’ general framework and character.
Design
The design stage involves making the blueprint of the new system, for example, the user interface format to be implemented and the required format/structure of the data. The nurse leaders who meet clinical requirements and take the time to check if the design of the CPOE system is user-friendly.
Their activities encompass requests for comments on design documents/ specifications and validation of the system’s usability from a clinician’s standpoint. For example, an error-free user interface design that is easy to understand and operate among nurse leaders should be promoted (Pradhan, 2023). When implementing a system, Nurse leaders know that the system should be designed to be useful to the end consumer and will, therefore, be adopted by the clinical staff.
Implementation
During implementation, it becomes a physical process of putting the system in place, making necessary adjustments to its integration with other systems, and staff training. Nurses say they attend training sessions, support clinical staff, and make sure the staff feels right addressing the new system.
It also has a crucial role in solving problems during the changeover process. For example, they can conduct meetings and motivational sessions to become acquainted with the newly introduced documentation procedures (Pradhan, 2023). This role enables them to facilitate change and assists in reversing the disruption caused by the new system, making it a seamless enhancement of clinical work.
Testing
Testing is the activities of the final stage of the project, which is the testing stage, and it comprises different tests such as unit tests, integration tests, and user acceptance tests. The leader of the nurse-headed team always facilitates end-users in conducting user acceptance testing to meet clinical requirements. They are utilized to determine test cases and scenarios replicating the system’s clinical situation to ensure it is effective and reliable.
For instance, they can demonstrate possible patient care situations where the system may face challenges when initiating its various functions (Akinsola et al., 2020). It is a comprehensive examination process that assists in solving problems that may surface during preliminary stages yet are detrimental to the whole system deployment.
Maintenance
Maintenance constantly updates the system, patches existing problems, and supports users. Nurse leaders provide system and support feedback and troubleshoot continually. Some of the responsibilities that fall under their stewardship are the constant surveillance of the system performance, the observation of problems therein, and the overall responsibility of seeing to it that the implementation of updates is seamless and efficient.
For example, they can introduce a reporting system to obtain information and feedback from the clinical staff and identify changes that should be made to the system (Akinsola et al., 2020). Such a scenario maintains active interaction with the program, ensuring that issues are addressed and the system continues adapting to the clinical setting.
Importance of Nurse Leader Involvement
The nurse leaders help create and implement best practices regarding each stage of SDLC as they are the middlemen between the IT personnel and the clinical workers or the personnel utilizing the system vested on the clinical side. It provides freeware designs, general tips, and a guide for training users (Risling & Risling, 2020).
For example, in the planning phase, they can consider the needs of the short-term and long-term care patients, which may be crucial, and in the design phase, they can work on making the layout clear and easy to navigate.
TN005 Assessment The Nurse Leader and the SDLC
Nurse leaders also utilize the idea of the system in middle management and turn it around to the technical developers who work on the system; therefore, it must be functional and usable. They offer something of paramount importance that can be the key to achieving better interfaces in terms of ease of use and defining more effective work processes (Risling & Risling, 2020). For example, by automating those explanations, nurse leadership can recommend features that help reduce the time nurses spend explaining to physicians and other healthcare workers why a specific task needs to be done at a certain time.
However, it is also important to highlight the possibility of training and support users with the help of nurse leaders. They can, therefore, design elaborate training sessions to cover all the clinical staff and take time to ensure that users of the new system are at ease and capable of fully utilizing it (Risling & Risling, 2020). They also know firsthand the clinical work that may be encountered and, therefore, prevent possible challenges within the training period.
Nurse leaders are important in the SDLC and the rollout of nursing informatics projects. They ensure that the system is well-engineered and fits in the clinical setting effectively to enhance the quality of health delivery and organization effectiveness (Risling & Risling, 2020). Thus, through becoming an active part of the SDLC, the nurse leaders contribute to developing effective and advantageous systems for their fellow healthcare professionals and clients.
Part 2. Job and Role Description of the Nurse in Systems Development and Implementation
Job
This position is the graduate-level nurse-information implementation specialist managing the nursing documentation system. This position is critical for guaranteeing that the system’s needs are met in terms of clinical specifications and ensuring that the system is adopted without problems in the performance of each operating workday.
Role Overview
The role of the graduate-level nurse Informatics Implementation Specialist involves being an active contributor to the design and integration of the documentation systems. I had responsibilities such as dealing closely with clients, establishing the exact clinical needs of the project, contributing to developing systems and models, constructing samples for testing purposes, and coming up with procedures to train the clinical staff (Risling & Risling, 2020).
The specialist makes sure that the system is easy to understand and navigate, that it will suit the practical requirements of the clinic, and that it will contribute to improving the quality of the care delivered to patients.
Responsibilities by SDLC Stage
- Planning and Defining Requirements: The Planning and Defining Requirements stage involves the effort of the Graduate-Level Nurse – Informatics Implementation Specialist in consultation with the project stakeholders to establish the clinical requirements and goals (Risling & Risling, 2020). They help develop medical assessments and draw indications as to the theorized scope of their work. They then evaluate whether this system will be viable when implemented in a real-life clinical environment.
- Analysis: At the Analysis stage, the specialist attends kick-off meetings for requirements creation and user interviews. They assess the organization’s working patterns at the clinical level and point out the potential improvements of the system, as well as the ideal correspondence between the system’s offered features and clinical activities (Wang et al., 2019).
- Design: In the Design stage, the specialist recommends the best user interface design or data entry forms from a clinical perspective. They look at the design documents and physical mock-ups to review the system from a clinical standpoint and advise on the ease of use of the system (Wang et al., 2019).
TN005 Assessment The Nurse Leader and the SDLC
- Implementation: In this stage, the specialist helps install the system and determines how it has to be configured. They also follow up with training sessions for the clinical staff and offer on-site assistance to the different clinics throughout the transitional period to make the adaptation of the particular system as smooth as possible and to fit it into the clinical practice concerning the schedule for tests and appointments of patients (Wang et al., 2019).
- Testing: During the testing phase, the specialist scripts test and get involved in either unit testing, integration testing, system testing, or user acceptance tests. They log and maintain problems in the system, indicating that the issues are solved before going live (Knox, 2019).
- Maintenance: The maintenance stage involves offering post-implementation user support and training to enable the continued and effective use of the system. They actively track system functionalities and any glitches that may occur, with the required action taken to rectify the problem, thus maintaining the functionality and suitability of the system based on the clinical setting’s dynamic requirements (Knox, 2019).
Qualifications
The suitable candidate for the Graduate-Level Nurse – Informatics Implementation Specialist position possesses a graduate degree in either Nursing or a relevant field and should be certified in nursing informatics. They understand the abstract concepts of CIS and Project Management and have worked with them in the clinical environment (Kim et al., 2020).
Skills and Competencies
The specialist must be able to provide great communication and coordination skills to be able to translate all clinical needs into certain technical needs or vice versa. Each core member must communicate well with clinical staff and IS specialists to satisfy the application needs of both populations (Kim et al., 2020).
Conclusion
Lastly, having service-oriented roles for the nurse leaders in the involvement of the SDLC of Nursing Informatics projects is obligatory. Their vast experience in clinical practice means that the systems being developed are easily navigable by clinicians and fulfill the roles of the personnel in the healthcare sector.
The job and role description of a Graduate-Level Nurse – Informatics Implementation Specialist includes the organizational importance and professional requirement to facilitate the new nursing documentation system acquisition project. This integration of the nurse leaders in the software development life cycle can, therefore, develop ways of improving patient care or even reaching better medical outcomes.