Informatics for nurse managers: integrating clinical expertise, business applications, and technology.

Nurse managers must become familiar with computers, information systems, and nursing informatics in order to be competitive in the future. Knowledge and skills for identifying critical data elements, organizing the data into information, and presenting it for decision making can be learned through formal and informal education. After learning to use computers and to apply nursing informatics, nurse managers will be equipped to make more relevant, data-driven management decisions. This article describes how nurse managers can identify business applications relevant to management, learn how to use them, and put nursing informatics to work in very practical ways.