Transitioning From a Task Focus to Knowledge Work

Nurses have mostly been task-oriented in that they use prior information form their learning experience to carry out routine tasks. On the other hand, nurses as knowledge workers aim to use the experiential evidence to be workers to develop their work processes especially with information and communication technologies. Informatics in Nursing helps in the creation of knowledge, which nurses can use in ensuring that they are knowledge workers (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015). Nurses can transfer their non- nursing skills to nursing settings especially if they are related to technology. As such, the nurse will use the experience working with various applications to apply them to nursing and thus develop information and communication systems that will help to provide an efficient nursing environment regarding sharing information and increasing the effectiveness of nurses as knowledge workers.

Nurses usually focus on using their already gained information to perform their daily task. The tasks may take the form of daily routines without any development of information as a result. Nurses as knowledge workers use the available information to produce new information that can assist in solving issues and define new issues in nursing practice (Davenport, 2013). The creation of knowledge develops new means of carrying out tasks more efficiently. Therefore, nurses use their potential to develop new methods by the use of informatics and the various applications it encompasses. The use of technology encompassed by nursing informatics ensures that the nurses have easier time inputting data and prevents time wastage by the continual manual input of data. The information gathered can thus be used to develop data that can be shared with other nurses and their input noted. Therefore, task-oriented nurses do not come up with new methods as they depend on what they have been taught and the knowledge from the hospital. Nurses who are knowledge workers enhance the nursing profession by coming up with new methods and solutions associated with patient care and treatment.

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