Don’t ask Tom Kane if he misses being a nurse.

“I am still very much a nurse,” he says emphatically, even though he is no longer
directly involved in patient care.

As a senior applications analyst in Information Systems at FirstHealth, Kane is one of a small but growing number of nurses who exchange the hands-on, “high-touch” aspect of nursing for the high-tech of computer science.

Tom Kane and Tim Kline are registered nurses who have moved from high-touch to high-tech professions by virtue of their positions in FirstHealth’s Information Systems Department. Kane moved to IS from the Operating Room, while Kline previously worked in Critical Care.

Kane is the go-to guy for a number of clinical areas, including the Emergency Department, operating room and surgical units, if they have a computer need or software problem. He is one of five FirstHealth applications analysts, all of whom are registered nurses working in nursing informatics (the melding of computer science and clinical practice). Kane is certified in the field.

Although it has been nearly 10 years since Kane worked as an operating room nurse, he uses his nursing knowledge and experience every day.

“Because I am a nurse, I speak the same language as the clinical managers, and I know what they’re talking about when they tell me what they need,” he says. “I can ask the right questions, which means managers get better data, and that allows them to make better decisions. I am their go-between with the technical people who provide whatever services are needed.”

One of those “technical people” is Tim Kline, a former critical care nurse who works on the programming or “development” side of the information systems department at FirstHealth.

“Development means we write interfaces and software programs that automate various functions and make the end users’ jobs easier,” he says.

Kline is part of a team that maintains all of FirstHealth’s clinical and financial computer systems, as well as the interfaces that allow the systems to talk to each other. He doesn’t deal directly with other departments—Kane and his colleagues do that—and he no longer thinks of himself as a nurse.

“I nurse computers now,” he says.

Even so, his nursing background is sometimes useful.

“When we are talking about how to give a clinical department a solution, it helps that I understand their processes,” he says.

Both Kline and Kane are members of the Applications Support department at FirstHealth. The department’s director, Linda Briggs, is also a nurse. She began her career as an emergency room nurse and then moved into clinical management. She has always been intrigued by information technology (IT) and was one of the first nursing coordinators at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill to have a computer on her desk.

Briggs came to FirstHealth as a systems coordinator in nursing after earning a master’s degree in health administration with a focus on information technology. She now has responsibility for applications support and development throughout FirstHealth, and she oversees the organization’s Web team. She says a good example of an IT application that her staff has implemented is the electronic patient record. “When a patient comes to any of the three FirstHealth hospitals, their chart information—lab data, radiology results, nursing records—is all fed into the electronic record,” Briggs says. “Then, as the patient’s visit progresses, doctors and other clinicians can go online to see the patient’s chart. They can do that any time, wherever they are; they don’t have to be on the nursing unit.”

Linda Briggs, R.N., director of FirstHealth’s Applications Support program

Briggs says the electronic record keeps doctors and others from having to chase down paper charts.

Another IT innovation is a system that enables FirstHealth physicians and other clinicians to get up-to-the-minute data on their patients through their wireless PDA devices.

“This lets a doctor at the bedside share the latest lab and radiology data with the patient,” Briggs says. “It’s all right there, readily accessible because of the wireless technology we have installed in our three hospitals. This is another example of how FirstHealth is utilizing technology to improve the delivery of care. For me, as a nurse, that is really exciting.”

This summer, nurses in two patient care units at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital began pilot-testing a new device that helps ensure that patients receive the right medication. The device scans a code on the patient’s identification bracelet and matches it with the medication
code.

“That is a major safety factor, and we are looking to start using it hospital-wide,” Briggs says.

Since 1995, when she briefly served as interim director of nursing at Montgomery Memorial Hospital, Briggs has focused exclusively on the high-tech rather than the high-touch aspects of health care. But she doesn’t think that makes her any less a nurse.

“Once a nurse, always a nurse,” she says. “Being a nurse is definitely an asset to what I do in information technology. I understand doctors
and nurses, and I understand their needs. I understand physical therapists and pharmacists and outcome managers, because I have worked with all of those disciplines as a nurse. That experience helps me in designing, building, implementing and supporting IT applications across FirstHealth.”