Introduction to Nursing Informatics

This series is directed to health care professionals who are leading the transformation of health care by using information and knowledge. Launched in 1988 as Computers in Health Care, the series offers a broad range of titles: some addressed to specific professions such as nursing, medicine, and health administration; others to special areas of practice such as trauma and radiology. Still other books in the series focus on interdisci- plinary issues, such as the computer-based patient record, electronic health records, and networked health care systems. Renamed Health Informatics in 1998 to reflect the rapid evolution in the discipline now known as health informatics, the series will continue to add titles that contribute to the evolution of the field. In the series, eminent experts, as editors or authors, offer their accounts of innovations in health informatics. Increasingly, these accounts go beyond hardware and software to address the role of information in influencing the transformation of health care delivery systems around the world. The series also will increas- ingly focus on "e;peopleware"e; and the organizational, behavioral, and soci- etal changes that accompany the diffusion of information technology in health services environments.