Andrea Walters’ Week 2 Main Post: The key functional area of nursing informatics relevant to me is education and consultant. Education is relevant as newly hired nurses need education to be competent with the electronic health records (EHR) used in the specialty. I precept nurses new to oncology and educate them on how informatics is used in oncology, how data is placed into the EHRs and how then used by informaticists. Consultant is relevant when there has been an issue, I have been used as a consultant and a liaison between nursing science and computer science. I have given my knowledge to the EHR developers on how they may better serve other oncology practices. Although I have been used as a consultant, oncology is constantly changing. Technology informatics guiding education reform (TIGER) has core competencies for specific areas. One core competency area under direct patient care is enhance information and knowledge management (Hubner et al., 2018). This competency will aid me to become more proficient in oncology and using a database by engaging in researching upcoming and new evidence-based practice. This competency is necessary to help identify problems and become part of the solution instead of waiting on the organization to develop solutions. The plan for developing this competency is to subscribe to an oncology journal, such as The Oncology Nurse to further my education outside of work, and research evidence-based practice through the organization’s research database, CINHAL. I will set aside 30 minutes twice weekly to research and read to develop this competency. Developing this competency will help refine and improve my skills and move from being a good to an expert nurse consultant and educator. Continuing education concentrating on informatics is necessary for all nurses in order to productively participate with content and dialogue that correlates to the informatics realm as nursing informatics is a rapidly changing field (Yen, Kennedy, Phillips & Collin, 2017). References Hubner, U., Shaw, T., Thye, J., Egbert, N., Marin, H., Chang, P., … Ball, M. (2018). Technology informatics guiding education -TIGER. Methods of Information in Medicine, 57(S 01), e30-342. doi: 10.3414/ME17-01-0155 Yen, P., Kennedy, M., Phillips, A., & Collins, S. (2017). Nursing informatics competency assessment for the nurse leader. The Journal of Nursing Administration, 47(5), 271-277. doi: 10.1097/NNA.0000000000000478