As part of HTN Digital Week June 2020, we welcomed Helen McGuire and Ainhoa Arjona, to present their experience of their new role as Assistant Nursing Information Officers (ANIO) at the Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust.
The ANIO role is to improve nursing practice through technology to optimise patient care and staff experience as well as bridging the gap between nurses and the IT department.
Ainhoa started taking us through the new post; “when I arrived to my post, I had to face new challenges, as the post was very different from my clinical post in the past. The Covid outbreak meant that I had to go back to ICU in a clinical capacity, but I saw how technology in the hospital was being pushed. After the peak, I went back to my ANIO role remotely where there was a new focus on telehealth and a new reality of working.”
“For the future, a digital nurse would be a more defined career path with an ANIO in every hospital and digital nurse teams across the UK.”
Helen then took us through her experience of the ANIO role: “an important part of our role is staff engagement and being the face of IT. We want to make sure we have kit that reduce login times, have high quality Wi-Fi, the systems are easy to navigate and are user friendly.”
“Making sure devices do everything you want them to do and making sure everything fits with what we currently have in terms of IT.”
“We are trying to promote person centred digital literacies and we feel we fit very nicely with digital literacy training going forward.”
Helen has been a qualified nurse since 2008, and she joined Harefield ITU in 2013. Her skills then combined together for her to become an ANIO.
The ANIO role that she is now in has changed in terms of joining a new department, hospital and team as well as learning new tech language.
“There is the challenge of having essentially two jobs; clinician and IT officer.”
“We want to inspire and support women in tech as well as those people from a BAME background.”
Watched the session here:
Helen and Ainhoa will be presenting on 22nd September as part of our next event, HTN Summit 2020, to continue to share their journey and learnings. To register please click here.
