The term “knowledge worker” was first coined by management consultant and author Peter Drucker in his book, The Landmarks of Tomorrow (1959). Drucker defined knowledge workers as high-level workers who apply theoretical and analytical knowledge, acquired through formal training, to develop products and services. Does this sound familiar?
Nurses are very much knowledge workers. What has changed since Drucker’s time are the ways that knowledge can be acquired. The volume of data that can now be generated and the tools used to access this data have evolved significantly in recent years and helped healthcare professionals (among many others) to assume the role of knowledge worker in new and powerful ways.
In this Assignment, you will consider the evolving role of the nurse leader and how this evolution has led nurse leaders to assume the role of knowledge worker. You will prepare a PowerPoint presentation with an infographic (graphic that visually represents information, data, or knowledge. Infographics are intended to present information quickly and clearly.) to educate others on the role of nurse as knowledge worker.
Reference: Drucker, P. (1959). The landmarks of tomorrow. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
To Prepare:
- Review the concepts of informatics as presented in the Resources.
- Reflect on the role of a nurse leader as a knowledge worker.
- Consider how knowledge may be informed by data that is collected/accessed.
The Assignment:
A good example of a scenario that would benefit from access to data is a case where a healthcare centre wants to know the number of patients visiting on a daily basis so as to establish whether the available staff is enough. Data of this nature can be collected by registering all the patients that come to seek medical services on a daily basis for a period of one month. Upon registering the patient, the data might be stored in the computer and retrieved when needed. The only people that will be allowed to access such information are the staff members (McGonigle, 2017).
The specific knowledge that will be derived from the data on a number of the patient visit is information on whether there is a shortage of labour force. In any case, the health facility will, for instance, establish that the number of patients visiting the facility is too high when compared to the available number of nurses; this will be taken to mean that there is a staff shortage. It will also be interpreted to mean that the current staff is being overworked and so the quality of health services being provided is more likely to be compromised (Sweeney, 2017).
A nurse leader can use clinical reasoning and judgment in the formation of knowledge from this experience to approximate the overall performance of the health facility being managed. The nurse leader could for example reason that since the health facility is understaffed, it may not be performing well. The nurse leader could judge that the patient feedback is more likely to be negative suggesting poor performance. This is due to the fact that feedback from the patients is one of the tools used to tell whether a health facility is performing well or not (McGonigle, 2017).
References
McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2017). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Sweeney, J. (2017). Healthcare Informatics. Online Journal of Nursing Informatics, 21(1).
**Attached is an example of one presentation**
(8 to 10 slides)
