Chief nurse executives need contemporary informatics competencies

Using the Informatics Organizing Research Model (Effken, 2003) to add context to the information gleaned from ethnographic interviews of seven chief nurse executives (CNEs) currently leading integrated delivery systems, the author concluded nurse executives can no longer depend exclusively on American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE) competencies as they outsource their responsibility for information technology knowledge to nurse informaticians, chief information officers, and physicians. Although AONE sets out a specific list of recommended information technology competencies for system CNEs, innovative nursing practice demands a more strategic, broader level of knowledge. This broader competency centers on the reality of CNEs being charged with creating and implementing a patient-centered vision that drives health care organizations' investment in technology. A new study identifies and validates the gaps between selected CNEs' self-identified informatics competencies and those set out by AONE (Simpson, 2012).