Nursing Informatics Competency among Nurses at a Teaching Hospital in Malaysia.

Nursing informatics merges nursing science with information and analytical sciences to identify, describe, manage, and disseminate nursing data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. Identifying nurses' informatics competency will help improve information technology utilisation in clinical practice. The aim of this study was to assess basic competency in nursing informatics and related factors influencing nurses working in a university teaching hospital. Thus, a cross-sectional study was conducted. A stratified random sampling of the total population of 1,136 nurses with sample size of 316 nurses participated in this study. The data was collected using a self-reported questionnaire utilising the Nursing Informatics Competency Assessment Tool (NICAT) reaching targeted sample by convenient approach. The results of this study showed that 85% (n = 269) nurses were competent in nursing informatics competency. There was a significant relationship between basic nursing informatics competency and sociodemographic of age (t = 4.194, p = 0.000), gender (t = -2.558, p = 0.011), educational level (F [2,313] = 5.094, p = 0.007) and working discipline (F [6,309] = 8.309, p = 0.000). There was also a significant relationship between basic nursing informatics competency and working experience (p = -0.231, n = 316, p = 0.000). However, the study is based on self-reporting and does not measure the actual performance of nursing informatics competency. Overall, the findings indicated the need for improvement in nursing informatics by exposure or awareness for potential age group and particular clinical setting for training and educational of nursing informatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]