Preparing Today's Nursing Students for Tomorrow's Career

Federal directives, nursing and nursing education associations, as well as accrediting bodies emphasize the importance of integrating health information technology and EHRs into nursing practice. Additionally, informatics is a required competency of baccalaureate nursing graduates. Nursing education's efforts to enhance students' learning in the area of electronic documentation is at its peak. The goal of enabling nurses to make healthcare safer, more effective, efficient, patient-centered, timely and equitable can only be achieved if a variety of technologies are clearly integrated into nursing education. Therefore, some schools have developed educational innovations to incorporate academic EHRs. As the mental health setting is unique, extraordinary attention has to be provided during the education of electronic documentation. Nursing education efforts must focus on interventions that provide resources that enhance the participant's knowledge and skills related to electronic documentation in a variety of clinical settings. Additionally, implementing academic EHRs in clinical settings offers nursing educators an opportunity to note the benefits. The state of nursing education depends on the accessibility to utilize academic EHRs in the nursing curriculum within the clinical setting to effectively prepare students for real-word practice.