Newswise — Six nurse informaticians, all leaders in the emerging nursing informatics profession, are to be inducted into the American Academy of Nursing (AAN) as Fellows, Saturday evening, Nov. 13, 2010, at the AAN Annual Meeting and Conference. The incoming AAN Fellows are Amy Barton, Patricia Dykes, Jacqueline Moss, Susan Matney, Joyce Sensmeier, and Charlotte Weaver. AAN is recognizing them for their individual accomplishments within the nursing profession and for their contributions to transforming America's health care system through design of electronic health record systems that support nursing workflow, critical decision support and best practices.
All six nurse informaticians being inducted are members of AMIA, the association of informatics professionals, and are active in the AMIA nursing informatics working group (NIWG), which provides a forum for nurses who are feeling the impact of information technology on clinical practice, education, administrative, and research duties. Nurse informaticians are looking ahead to how information science will affect workflow priorities and the future direction of nursing, including emerging demand for more trained nurse informaticians.
NIWG Chair Charlotte Weaver, AAN inductee and Senior Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer at Gentiva Health Services, Atlanta, observes, “This incoming group of AAN Fellows represents the highest number of nurse informaticians AAN has ever inducted in a single year. This milestone represents recognition of nursing informatics at the highest levels of the profession’s leadership as a specialized field that is integral to the practice and science of nursing.”
Two of the new Fellows hold positions in academia and four serve in healthcare organizations that impact healthcare delivery, both regionally and nationally:
• Amy Barton, Professor and Daniel and Janet Mordecai Endowed Chair in Rural Health Nursing, is Associate Dean for Clinical and Community Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver, College of Nursing. Dr. Barton serves as project director for Colorado Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN), a statewide initiative funded by the Colorado Trust.
• Patricia Dykes, DNSc, MA, RN, is Corporate Manager of Nursing Informatics and Research at Partners Healthcare, Boston. Dr. Dykes serves as informatics consultant for acute care documentation and conducts informatics and patient safety research.
• Jacqueline A. Moss, PhD, RN, is Associate Professor and Assistant Dean for Clinical Simulation and Technology, at the School of Nursing, University of Alabama, Birmingham. Dr. Moss leads the informatics curriculum and research program at UAB.
• Susan A. Matney, MS, RN-C, is Senior Content Engineer at University of Utah, Salt Lake City. Ms Matney has distinguished herself by providing a ‘nursing voice’ in development of healthcare informatics standards and multidisciplinary terminology development, adopted by the U.S. government in HIPAA and Meaningful Use standards.
• Joyce Sensmeier, MS, RN-C, is Vice President, Informatics at HIMSS (Chicago) and in this role contributes to development of healthcare informatics standards. Ms. Sensmeier also co-chairs the Alliance for Nursing Informatics, an organization of 27 distinct nursing informatics organizations, in collaboration with AMIA.
• Charlotte Weaver, PhD, RN, is Senior Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer of Gentiva Health Services, Atlanta. For multiple and sustained contributions to the field of nursing informatics, Dr .Weaver has been recognized as a “nursing informatics pioneer.” AMIA is the leading professional association of informatics professionals and an important player in medicine, health care, and science. AMIA serves as the voice of the nation’s top biomedical and health informatics professionals. The NIWG wiki keeps members of the AMIA nursing informatics community linked together on hot topics and news that emerge from the field.
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