Adapting and validating informatics competencies for senior nurse leaders in the Canadian context: Results of a Delphi study

Digital and informatics competencies: Requirements for nursing leaders in Canada

“…Supporting nurse leaders to acquire these competencies is vitally important to leverage digital health, improve nursing practice, and outcomes of care. 14…”

“…To increase awareness about nurse leader informatics competencies and facilitate continued learning through self-study, one approach is the development of a self-assessment instrument based on the informatics competencies from the Delphi study. 14 There is currently a paucity of instruments to support the evaluation of informatics competency among nurse leaders. 19 Creating a self-assessment tool for these informatics competencies is a foundational step to enable Canadian nurse leaders to actively engage in learning to advance their knowledge and skills in digital health.…”

“…In response, our research team of nurse leaders from several Canadian jurisdictions led several studies to identify informatics competencies for Canadian nurse leaders (Figure 1). 14,15 Informed by approaches conducted in the United States, 16 this began with a scoping review of the literature and followed by a Delphi study to engage key stakeholders on validating competences that are important to Canadian nurse leaders. These findings are now used to inform the development of a self-assessment tool that can be used by Canadian nurse leaders.…”

“…Examples of digital health competencies14 applied across practice domains Practice domain 8 Examples Administration Advocate for and support the role of nursing in the development and implementation of a digital health strategic plan Promote and celebrate the achievements arising from the use of informatics for better quality care Clinical care Explore how emerging technologies (eg, virtual care, robotics) can support better nursing practice Explore how the use of data analytics and existing data can be used to provide personalized and tailored care Education Identify and explore bottlenecks and unintended consequences that hinder effective use of digital health solutions and clinician wellness Deliver appropriate training and support for effective adoption and use of information and communication technologies in healthcare, and other digital solutions supporting clinical care delivery Policy Promote and advocate for investments and infrastructure to support the use of digital health and analytics in nursing environments Form interprofessional collaborations to support the use of digital health tools throughout the care journey Research…”

Let’s Get Digital

“…Furthermore, the responsibility for the "work" associated with digital health solution deployment can no longer be relegated to the identified experts in the field but should be seen as the work of all leaders and users alike. We have had entry-to-practice informatics competencies for Canadian nurses since 2012 (Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing 2012), and informatics competencies for Canadian nurse leaders have been recently identified (Strudwick et al 2019). As a 2018 study of Canadian schools of nursing demonstrated (Nagle et al 2019), we still have much work to do integrating the entry-to-practice competencies into undergraduate nursing curricula.…”