In nursing informatics, wisdom is defined as the use of knowledge, imagination, insight, and experience that is guided by ideals and directed toward achieving a common good. However, in some instances, nursing wisdom is typically based on a clinical judgment approach that revolves around the senses, emotions, and intuition (Booth et al., 2021). The process of making decisions on the information to be gathered about a patient, making data interpretations, obtaining a nursing diagnosis, and determining the best course of nursing action is known as judgment on the other hard. Critical thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving are all aspects of judgment.
Nursing wisdom and judgment differ primarily in that wisdom is the application of information, intelligence, and experience to achieve common goals, most often the improvement of patient care. This indicates that wisdom is used to facilitate the use of tried-and-true methods for problem solving. Contrarily, judgment concentrates on using information to address newly discovered issues (Booth et al., 2021). It entails using past knowledge to try and solve a new problem by data gathering, analysis, and establishment of a solution or the best solution to the recognized problem rather than applying knowledge by following typical methods to address a problem. The main similarity between wisdom and judgment in nursing is that both skills need to be applied in order to achieve a particular nursing goal. Judgment involves determining the best solution for a new problem or a different answer to an existing problem, whereas wisdom concentrates on finding the correct solution for established difficulties.
The complexity of the informatics skills required of registered nurses has significantly expanded during the past ten years. This greater skill level is a sign that there needs to be more explanation of current nursing informatics competencies. The gathering and utilization of patient data for analysis and dissemination are part of nursing clinical informatics competencies. Effective educational approaches and faculty development are both required for graduates to have informatics proficiency.
By connecting clinical practice with informatics solutions and identifying potential nursing practice or informatics gaps for proposed CDS, the Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom (DIKW) framework can assist nurse leaders in organizing strategic planning and prioritizing prospective AI/CDS applications (Honey et al., 2017). The DIKW model, in a nutshell, examines several methods for deriving value and insights from all types of data, including big data, little data, smart data, structured or unstructured data. According to the DIKW framework, data lead to information, information to knowledge, and knowledge to wisdom. When developing CDS tools to increase nursing practice above and beyond licensing for better nurse decision-making, this paradigm is very pertinent. The CDS tools, including AI-driven tools, can be categorized using the DIKW framework (Honey et al., 2017). The pyramidal structure of this framework suggests that knowledge is uncommon, and data are plentiful. Data have little to no meaning in isolation, information is data plus meaning, knowledge is derived by identifying patterns and relationships between types of information, and wisdom is the comprehension and internalization of knowledge patterns and relationships, according to previous publications discussing this framework.
In order to improve patient care, CDS offers doctors computer-generated clinical knowledge and patient-related information that is intelligently filtered and provided at the right times. In other words, AI might be seen as a source of energy for more sophisticated CDS. For instance, consider providing nurses with a CDS alert based on data from tens of thousands of patients and other nurses managing patients with diabetes.
References
Booth, R., Strudwick, G., McMurray, J., Chan, R., Cotton, K., & Cooke, S. (2021). The future of nursing informatics in a digitally-enabled world. In Introduction to nursing informatics (pp. 395-417). Springer, Cham.
Honey, M. L., Skiba, D. J., Procter, P., Foster, J., Kouri, P., & Nagle, L. M. (2017). Nursing informatics competencies for entry to practice: the perspective of six countries. Stud Health Technol Inform, 232, 51-61.