Roy Simpson
Professional accomplishments
Roy Simpson is an informatics pioneer who is the current Deputy President for the Cerner Corporation. He is also the Senior Executive for the Corporation. In the early 1970s, he worked as an assistant to a Chief Nursing Officer in a community-based hospital owned by a university. Later, he became a Chief Nursing Officer in a large hospital that had many systems. In the late 1970s, he assumed the position of a Chief Nursing Officer and a Deputy Head of Nursing Affairs in the Hospital Corporation of America.
This was a multi-system healthcare institution that required the use of information technology in financial management, staffing, and pricing of healthcare. Noting the requirements of his job, he had to adopt reporting structures that were based on information technology. He found himself adopting nursing informatics because he was involved in the use of information technology in classifying patients’ data, analyzing financial data, and practicing cost-based reimbursement. Later, he became instrumental in the development of the Nursing Minimum Data Set.
Contributions to nursing practice and nursing informatics
Simpson contributed to nursing practice by implementing the Nursing Minimum Data Set. He was instrumental in securing funding for implementing information technology approaches in the nursing practice. He trained nurses on the use of information technology tools in nursing care. He has also contributed to nursing practice by conducting nursing research and publications articles in peer-reviewed journals. Simpson has also played key roles in enhancing nursing informatics by writing articles that define the changing roles of informaticians and implementation of informatics systems in healthcare institutions. This has gone a long way in enlightening nurses on nursing informatics across the world (Reddy, McDonald, Pratt & Shabot, 2005).
Lessons learned from Simpson’s experiences
Simpson’s hard work in nursing in several healthcare institutions shows that hard work pays. It can also be learned that teamwork is essential in healthcare institutions. For example, Simpson was able to team up with two researchers to implement the Nursing Minimum Data Set. He understood that he could not implement it alone, thus believed it could be achieved by involving other senior nurses from different institutions.
Another lesson that can be learned from his experiences is perseverance. While working at the Hospital Corporation of America, he was faced with the challenges of implementing systems to manage finance and patients’ data. However, he did not give, and he finally implemented the new systems effectively.
Skills and ideas
The nursing informatics leader demonstrated strategic management skills, which enabled him to manage people and implement new informatics systems in healthcare institutions. I would apply strategic management skills in my professional practice to manage systems at work. This would result in improved patient care outcomes.
Dr. Patricia Abbott
Professional accomplishments
She is one of the senior directors of the Pan American Health Organization. She is also a Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. The nursing informatics leader began with a Diploma in Nursing, and she went back for her BSN studies upon realizing that she was not being promoted at the workplace due to her limited academic qualifications. She was introduced to nursing informatics during her final semester of her BSN, whereby she studied a 3-credit course on ‘Nursing and Computers.’ She later did her master’s degree before she became a clinical specialist managing healthcare information at Veterans’ Affairs Medical Center in Baltimore.
Abbott’s contributions to nursing practice and nursing informatics
While being interviewed for her roles in the advancement of nursing practice using nursing informatics, Dr. Baltimore asserted that she had contributed immensely to advocacy, policy, and education. She was instrumental in advancing nursing informatics knowledge among students and nurses at the University of Maryland. Therefore, she has contributed to nursing practice by encouraging students to adopt informatics in nursing practice with the aim of improving patient care (Schleyer & Beaudry, 2009).
Her nursing research has resulted in improved healthcare because nurses are able to access peer-reviewed articles, which are essential in promoting evidence-based nursing care (Schleyer & Beaudry, 2009). It has been demonstrated that nurses who are able to adopt nursing approaches that have been tested and verified through research are able to offer quality nursing care to patients (Schleyer & Beaudry, 2009; Weng, Levine & Mun, 2009).
Lessons and skills learned from her experiences
Dr. Abbott has demonstrated excellent policy advocacy skills at PAHO-John Hopkins School of Nursing Program, which is an international program that involves interacting with the nursing population. She has used her advocacy skills to advance the use of nursing informatics tools by nurses offering care to patients in remote areas in Africa.
The best lesson that can be learned from the experiences of Dr. Abbott is the determination to succeed in life. She went back to school so that she could earn a BSN, which could be essential in her career growth. I would be determined to grow in the nursing profession by achieving the highest academic qualifications that would see me get promoted at the workplace.
References
Reddy, M. C., McDonald, D. W., Pratt, W., & Shabot, M. M. (2005). Technology, work, and information flow: lessons from the implementation of a wireless alert pager system. Journal of biomedical informatics, 38(3), 229-238.
Schleyer, R., & Beaudry, S. (2009). Data to wisdom: informatics in telephone triage nursing practice. AACN Viewpoint, 31, 1-10.
Weng, C., A Levine, B., & Mun, S. K. (2009). Software architecture and engineering for patient records: current and future. Military medicine, 174(Supplement 1), 27-34.