Curriculum Strategies to Improve Baccalaureate Nursing Information Technology Outcomes

Improving information technology (IT) outcomes is a top nursing education priority. Improving care access, quality, and cost effectiveness, IT skills are vital for professional development and advancement. Nursing programs have embraced distance learning and added informatics content, courses, and specific technologies; however, undergraduates' and educators' skills are still considered inadequate. Meanwhile, the Nursing Informatics specialty has moved beyond IT competency articulation and measurement. It is promoting information literacy to support evidence-based practice and the cultivation of clinical wisdom. The Technology Informatics Guiding Education Reform (TIGER) Initiative, a coalition aiming to advance IT outcomes in nursing education, has cited benchmarking and sharing best practices as key to achieving its goals. Thus, this article reports on the process, results, and implications of a project using curriculum strategies to enhance IT outcomes. A 3-year action plan directed faculty, student, and agency evaluation, curriculum mapping, model learning module, and documentation development.