An organizing framework for nursing informatics research

Because nursing informatics is a young specialty, perhaps it is not surprising that much of the research done to date has been problem-driven, as opposed to model-driven. Continuing to struggle with definitions, nursing informatics lacks a theoretical base on which to build its science. When models or theories have been used to guide research, they typically have been applied to a single, or to very few, studies. In this paper, I describe and evaluate several of the models that have been described in nursing informatics literature and then propose an organizing model that may be used as an overarching framework to guide research.