Okay so the title is a bit deceptive. This isn’t an article about Rocky Balboa. It is however, an article on the TIGER initiative - what it is and why it’s important to my practice, and why it should be to yours too.
President Bush set the goals regarding health information technology (HIT) in 2004 and first national HIT Summit was convened. A group of nursing informaticists attended and were struck by the fact that nurses were not even mentioned in any of the presentations. Subsequently, leaders in nursing informatics held their own meeting on the topic and the Technology Informatics Guiding Education Reform (TIGER) initiative was born (Walker, 2010). Over the years this initiative has outlines three phases, each with a progressively elevated goals to “allow informatics tools, principles, theories, and practices to be used by nurses to make health care safer, effective, efficient, patient centered, timely, and equitable; and, second, to interweave enabling technologies transparently into nursing practice and education, making information technology “the stethoscope for the 21st century””(Walker, 2010, p.352). Phase three has a call to pass and accept the baton of the goals put forth by the TIGER initiative.
Although much less entertaining than Rocky this initiative has been rolling forth for the last decade and a half, and is impacting nursing care for the better. I intend to accept the baton. Specifically in the realms of patient safety and research. HIT has afforded the incorporation of all kinds of patient safety measures from medication administration to alerts on suspicious trends in vital signs, to imaging, and far beyond. This is the focal point of HIT for me and why am accepting the baton being passed to support this initiative. To err is human and no one person will know everything and we will all make mistakes. HIT is one more barrier to prevent patient injury and one more support tool for nurses.
How can you as a nurse take this initiative and make an impact? “One primary way of accepting the baton is to become familiar with TIGER resources, provide leadership, serve as a role model, and apply relevant models for the culture change”(Walker, 2010, p.354). Individual nurses are what lead the way in culture change in a way that no government mandate ever could. We make up a huge chunk of the healthcare workforce. Imagine what we can do on this front if we all pull together!
Walker, P., H. (2010). The TIGER initiative: A call to accept and pass the baton. Nursing Economic$, 28(5), 352–355. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.libpublic3.
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