| Course | NUR-6310 Nursing Informatics Systems Life Cycle |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 1 |
| Paper type | Informatics paper: planning phase and project charter |
| Length | About 1,040 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Thomas Edison State University |
| Program | M.S. in Nursing, Nursing Informatics |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for NUR 6310 Module 1
Before the First Pump Is Connected: A Project Charter for Smart Pump Integration at a Freehold Hospital
Student Name
M.S. in Nursing, Nursing Informatics, Thomas Edison State University
NUR-6310: Nursing Informatics: Systems Life Cycle
Mentor Name
Month Day, Year
Before the First Pump Is Connected: A Project Charter for Smart Pump Integration at a Freehold Hospital
Why This Project
The hospital and project in this paper are invented. A 340-bed community hospital in Freehold uses smart infusion pumps with a drug library and an electronic health record, but no data pass between them. Nurses program each pump by hand from the order on the screen, and they document rates and volumes by hand in the record. Over the past year, pump logs showed that 9 percent of infusions were started outside the drug library, bypassing its dose limits, and the hospital's safety reports included eleven infusion programming errors, two of them involving heparin and one involving insulin. The pump vendor and the record vendor now offer an interface that would send the ordered drug, dose and rate from the record to the pump for the nurse to confirm, and send pump data back to the record.
The chief nursing officer named an informatics nurse to lead the planning phase. Her first deliverable was a project charter.
What Information Technology Can and Cannot Do
Bates and Gawande (2003) described three ways information technology improves safety: by preventing errors and adverse events, by speeding the response once an event occurs and by tracking events and feeding back data so that organizations can learn. They pointed to order entry with decision support as an example of the first and to automated monitoring as an example of the second. They also warned that technology can introduce new errors, for example when defaults are wrong or when people trust a system too much, and that implementation requires careful attention to workflow and design.
Pump integration fits the first category: it removes manual transcription, a known source of error. It also carries the warning: if the interface sends the wrong concentration or the nurse stops checking the pump screen, a new kind of error appears.
Why Projects Fail
Kaplan and Harris-Salamone (2009) drew on the literature and on an American Medical Informatics Association workshop to examine why health information technology projects succeed or fail. They concluded that failure is common and that its causes are rarely technical alone. More often, projects fail because of poor communication, weak leadership and sponsorship, inattention to clinical workflow, inadequate involvement of the people who will use the system and unrealistic timelines. They recommended treating projects as social and organizational change as much as technical installation, and learning from failures rather than hiding them.
The charter answers each of these risks with a named structure.
The Informatics Nurse's Role
Nursing informatics, as the professional association defines it (American Nurses Association, 2015), is the nursing specialty that handles data, information, knowledge and wisdom in practice, drawing on computer and analytic science as well as nursing. Its standards expect the informatics nurse to assess needs, identify outcomes, plan, implement and evaluate, working with interprofessional teams and representing nursing's perspective. In this project, the informatics nurse is the bridge between bedside nurses, pharmacy, biomedical engineering, information technology and the two vendors.
The Charter
Several entries respond directly to the failure literature. Clinical nurse champions from each unit give users a voice from the start. The steering group gives the project a sponsor with authority. The success measures are specific and drawn from data the pumps already collect, so that the project can be judged on outcomes rather than on whether the interface works. The exclusion of syringe pumps and pediatrics in the first phase keeps the scope realistic.
| Charter element | Content |
|---|---|
| Problem statement | Manual pump programming and documentation; 9 percent of infusions outside the drug library; 11 programming errors in a year |
| Scope | All adult inpatient units and the emergency department; large-volume pumps; continuous and intermittent infusions. Excluded: syringe pumps, PCA, pediatrics in phase one |
| Sponsor and governance | Chief nursing officer as sponsor; steering group of nursing, pharmacy, biomedical engineering, IT and patient safety; monthly meetings |
| Project team | Informatics nurse lead, pharmacy informaticist, interface analyst, two clinical nurse champions per unit |
| Success measures | Drug library compliance above 95 percent; programming errors halved; documentation of rates matching pump data above 98 percent |
| Major risks | Wrong drug concentrations in the library, wireless dead zones, nurses skipping the confirmation step |
| Timeline | Library cleanup and design, 4 months; testing, 2 months; phased go-live by unit, 3 months |
Planning for Risk
The most serious risk is a mismatch between the drug concentrations in the record's orders and those in the pump library. Pharmacy will reconcile the two lists line by line before any testing, and every mismatch will be resolved in favor of a single standard concentration. A wireless survey of every unit will identify dead zones before go-live. The confirmation step, in which the nurse checks the pump screen against the patient and the order before starting, will be emphasized in training, and pump logs will show whether nurses are accepting programmed values without pausing.
Communication
The charter includes a communication plan: monthly updates at nursing practice council, a project page on the intranet, demonstrations on each unit before go-live and a one-click form for nurses to flag trouble during and after implementation. The plan treats communication as a two-way channel, because nurses will see problems that the project team cannot.
Measures Beyond Go-Live
The charter commits the hospital to measuring results for twelve months after the last unit goes live, with quarterly reports to the steering group. If programming errors do not fall, the team will review pump logs and safety reports to find out why rather than declare success because the interface is running.
Limits
The success measures depend on pump logs and voluntary safety reports, which undercount errors. The project's budget has not yet been approved, and delays could compress the timeline. The failure literature describes risks but offers fewer tested methods for avoiding them.
Conclusion
Pump integration can remove a known source of infusion errors, but evidence shows that information technology can also create new ones and that projects fail mainly for human and organizational reasons. A charter with clear scope, a sponsor with authority, nurse champions, specific measures and planned risks gives the project its best chance, and the informatics nurse's role is to keep nursing practice at the center of it.
References
American Nurses Association. (2015). Nursing informatics: Scope and standards of practice (2nd ed.). American Nurses Association.
Bates, D. W., & Gawande, A. A. (2003). Improving safety with information technology. New England Journal of Medicine, 348(25), 2526-2534. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsa020847
Kaplan, B., & Harris-Salamone, K. D. (2009). Health IT success and failure: Recommendations from literature and an AMIA workshop. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 16(3), 291-299. https://doi.org/10.1197/jamia.M2997
NUR 6310 Module 1 instructions, in plain terms
The catalog description of NUR-6310 promises a sequential process for implementing an information system, and because TESU keeps the syllabus inside the course, the first module is planned as a planning-phase paper with a project charter. Write an informatics paper that states the clinical problem with data, explains what the technology can and cannot do with reference to evidence, reviews why health IT projects fail, describes the informatics nurse's role using the profession's scope and standards and presents a charter with scope, governance, team, measurable success criteria, risks and a timeline. A few sections swap the charter for a needs assessment or a request for proposal. Check whether a charter template is supplied, whether the charter goes in the body or an appendix and how much detail the budget section needs, and pick a project small enough to describe completely. A charter for a single interface or module is usually more convincing than one for a whole record.
How the NUR 6310 Module 1 example is put together
An invented Freehold hospital's manual pump programming and its error data open the paper. Bates and Gawande's review explains how information technology prevents and introduces errors, and Kaplan and Harris-Salamone's review shows that projects usually fail for organizational reasons. The ANA's scope and standards define the informatics nurse's role. A seven-row charter covers problem, scope, governance, team, success measures, risks and timeline, and the text explains how each entry answers a known cause of failure. Risk planning, communication, measures beyond go-live, limits and a conclusion follow. Annotations point out that every charter row can be checked later, which is what a steering group needs when it reviews progress.
Where the marks sit in the NUR 6310 Module 1 rubric
Credit in a planning-phase paper goes to a clinical problem stated with data, an accurate and balanced account of what the technology can do, use of evidence on why projects fail, a clear description of the informatics nurse's role and a charter with realistic scope, a sponsor, user involvement, specific success measures and named risks. Mentors notice when exclusions keep a scope manageable. Success measures that use existing data show practical thinking. A commitment to measure after go-live shows that the writer sees the whole life cycle. Citing the professional standards and the studies accurately in APA style completes the paper, with any charter table labeled and readable on its own.
Common NUR 6310 Module 1 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Charters often promise to "improve safety" without a number; choose a measure and a target. Another frequent gap is a scope that tries to cover every unit and device at once. Name the sponsor and the people who will speak for bedside nurses. List the risks you can foresee and what you will do about each. Plan measurement for months after go-live, not only up to it. Keep the charter short enough for a steering group to read in one sitting, and put supporting detail in an appendix. A first draft of your own charter, written to the course brief, comes free from the desk, and the Freehold plan can serve as a pattern.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Thomas Edison State University document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.
More NUR 6310 and M.S. in Nursing, Nursing Informatics sample papers
- NUR 6310 Module 2: Current-State Analysis Paper: Medication Reconciliation Workflow Through a Sociotechnical Lens
- NUR 6310 Module 3: Usability Design Paper: A Sepsis Screening Flowsheet Built on Usability Principles
- NUR 6310 Module 4: Testing Paper: Pediatric Weight-Based Dosing Scenarios Before an Order Entry Upgrade
- NUR 6310 Module 5: Implementation Paper: Go-Live, Superusers and Unintended Consequences in a Three-Hospital System
- NUR 6310 Module 6: Evaluation Paper: Drug Interaction Alerts and the DeLone and McLean Success Model
- NUR 7010 Module 2: Database Design Paper: A Wound Registry Built on the Relational and Entity-Relationship Models
- NUR 7110 Module 5: App Privacy Paper: Reviewing Mental Health Apps Before Recommending Them
NUR 6310 Module 1 questions, answered
Where can I find a free NUR 6310 Module 1 sample paper?
The project charter paper for smart pump integration at an invented Freehold hospital, from the error data to the seven-row charter, is printed above.
How does information technology improve patient safety?
Bates and Gawande described three ways: preventing errors, speeding the response to events and tracking events to give feedback.
Why do health IT projects fail?
Kaplan and Harris-Salamone found that failures usually stem from communication, leadership, workflow and user involvement problems rather than technology alone.
What belongs in a health IT project charter?
The problem, scope and exclusions, sponsor and governance, team, measurable success criteria, major risks and a timeline.
What is the informatics nurse's role in planning?
To assess needs, define outcomes and plan with an interprofessional team while representing nursing practice, as the ANA standards describe.