Integrating Cognitive Informatics into Nursing Care

Cognitive informatics (CI) is the collusion of cognitive science, information science, biology, and philosophy. Yingxu Wang writes in an article for Brain and Mind that “CI focuses on the nature of information in the brain, such as information acquisition, memory, categorization, retrieve, generation, representation, and communication” (Wang, 2003, p. 159).

The goal of nursing informatics has always been to increase the efficiency and management of patient care using information science. By adding cutting-edge theories of mind into that mix, as well as related fields like artificial intelligence and neural biology, nurses will be able to more effectively tailor their care plans to address the neurological needs and behaviors of patients.

In this way, nursing plans can benefit from CI implantation across an array of disparate conditions. As Mastrian and McGonigle write in Nursing Outlook, “These cognitively robust systems will support and extend our thinking, helping us choose the best course of action and, ultimately, make better decisions for our patients” (Mastrian, 2008, p. 333). That being said, it will be easiest to see the efficacy of such implementation in a nursing plan that deals specifically with addressing psychological distress or long-term trauma, such as grieving. In other words, a nursing system that applied cognitive informatics theory to formulate a care plan for a grieving patient--based on their medical and psychological history, as well as a panoply of other cognitive variables--could address both the patient’s anatomical and psychological idiosyncrasies through continuing cognitive development activities.

Ultimately, any nurse that cohesively implements cognitive informatics into his or her care plans will be colluding with the future, instead of against it. As the philosophies and sciences of mind continue to illuminate the mysterious of the brain and how it holistically affects the body, nursing will need to integrate the burgeoning fields of cognitive and information science in order to provide the most effective and humane care possible.

References

Mastrian, K., & McGonigle, D. (2008). Cognitive informatics: An essential component of nursing technology design. Nursing outlook, 56(6), 332-333.

Wang, Y. (2002). On cognitive informatics. In Cognitive Informatics, 2002. Proceedings. First IEEE International Conference on (pp. 34-42). IEEE.