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Embeddedness ("it is 'sunk' into other structures"). NIC is embedded into various information practices and tools that are used by hospitals and insurance companies for costing and coding reimbursements and by medical librarians for accessing medical literature. NIC is used in clinical decision-making software, hospital accounting systems, and nursing information systems. |
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Transparency ("it is ready to hand and does not have to reinvented each time"). NIC is oriented to standard scientific and working practical knowledge and to being ready to hand for the practitioner. Instead of applying idiosyncratic or new labels to diseases, practitioners are asked to turn to classification systems to fill out forms, assign values, and compare results.
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Having reach or scope (it is not a "one-off event or one-site practice"). NIC aims to cover U.S. nursing with a slow growth currently into the European and Asian nursing communities. Interest in adapting it has been shown by groups of social workers, occupational therapists, and pharmacists. |
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It is learned as part of membership ("associated with communities of practice"). NIC is increasingly present in nursing education programs. Because of the ways in which it is propagated, it is closely tied with what it means to be a nurse. |
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It is linked with conventions of practice ("both shapes and is shaped by the conventions of its communities of practice"). For NIC, the informatic conventions are young, but a key design issue is its fit with the conventions of nursing practice. One aspect of NIC user meetings is the developer's insistence that NIC integrate with work practice, and that NIC users share common conventions concerning the system's use. They are currently encouraging the development of clusters of interventions (invisible to the classification system) to represent local practice at specific institutions, for example, at nursing homes. |
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Multifunctionality ("As with electricity, supports several functions"). NIC supports a wise range of functions, from data collection and basic epidemiological research to accounting by insurance firms and legitimization of work practices. These definitions are touchstones to order discussion here and to help guide the construction of a useful model for organizational analysis. Although there is a rich body of research on computerization, impact, values, and work-place politics, as yet theories of information infrastructure and its evolution, meaning, and values implications are not well developed. |
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