Nursing

Nurses’ association creates NurseONE online portal

SASKATOON – As part of its e-nursing strategy the Canadian Nurses Association has launched NurseONE, the Canadian Nurses Portal.

NurseONE (INF-Fusion in French) is personalized and interactive to help nurses in Canada and around the world care for their patients, manage their careers and connect with colleagues and experts with the click of a mouse. NurseONE supports the depth and breath of nursing in all practice settings – clinical, education, administration and research.

NurseONE and INF-Fusion can be accessed by logging onto www.nurseone.ca or www.inf-fusion.ca.

NurseONE was developed in partnership with the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch of Health Canada and in collaboration with nurses, students, governments and employers.

The CNA’s chief executive officer, Lucille Auffrey, announced the arrival of the new service at the association’s biennial convention, held this year in Saskatoon.

She informed delegates of the quality information available to them through NurseONE, including journals, online libraries and public health advisories for increased emergency preparedness. “As knowledge workers in this technological age,” she said, “it is essential that nurses have access to the latest information at their fingertips. NurseONE meets that need.”

According to Auffrey, while technological advancements are here to stay, they are useless if nurses can’t access them or don’t know how to use them.

“Access to computers and the Internet in some regions of the country is either non-existent or slow and unreliable,” she says. “We need to find ways to improve access because healthcare providers working in remote settings need a wide range of knowledge and skills to deal with various and complex cases.”

She adds, “Nurses can provide insights into how technology can enhance care. It is essential that we play a greater role in the development of information and communication technology solutions.”

CNA is the professional voice of registered nurses in Canada. It is a federation of 11 provincial and territorial professional associations and regulatory authorities for registered nurses. CNA believes that the sustainability of a publicly funded, publicly administered, not-for-profit health system rests upon a vibrant nursing workforce.

In a release, the Canadian Nurses Association noted that E-nursing, the use of information and communication technology in nursing, is revolutionizing the way nurses interact with patients, deliver care and communicate with colleagues.

In June, over 1,000 delegates attending the Canadian Nurses Association biennial convention and annual meeting in Saskatoon discussed the timely theme Advancing Technology and Preserving Caring in Nursing.

“Equipment such as computer terminals on hospital units, laptops for community health nurses and personal digital assistants for charting at the bedside are as necessary as stethoscopes for health-care providers to do their jobs,” says Deborah Tamlyn, president of CNA. “Information and communications technology is an integrated and essential part of health-care practice.”

Technology is considered key to addressing challenges to Canada’s healthcare system such as geography, shortages of healthcare professionals and increasing costs.

However, some experts believe that e-health is at least 10 years behind other information management intense sectors such as banking.

To ensure nurses are part of the e-health revolution, CNA is leading an e-nursing strategy aimed at bringing the nursing community up to speed with other industries.

“Technological innovation has swept the globe, and nurses have accepted the challenge this evolution brings,” says Auffrey. “Today, nurses work in a variety of e-health programs such as tele-triage. They access online libraries and databases of clinical practice guidelines in their workplaces and interact with their peers in discussion groups over the Internet. Nurses are also involved in developing standards to implement electronic health records, and many nursing educational programs are now offered online.”