An informatics nurse has determined that medication reconciliation is often incomplete at discharge because the tool is missing from the discharge workflow. With stakeholders, she now specifies that 95% of discharges should have completed reconciliation within three months of the fix. In the ANA nursing informatics standards of practice, this step BEST reflects which standard?

Diagnosis, Problems, and Issues Identification

An informatics nurse is updating release-of-information workflows. Under the HIPAA Privacy Rule, which disclosure is exempt from the minimum necessary standard?

Sending the full record to a specialist who is treating the patient

Sending claims data to a health plan for payment of a hospital stay

Sending staffing reports with patient names to the hospital's auditors

Sending case records to an outside agency performing a quality review

A RACI chart for a hospital's barcode medication administration rollout lists both the chief nursing officer and the director of pharmacy as "A" for the go-live decision. What is the MOST appropriate revision?

Assign a single accountable person for the decision and list the other as consulted

Leave both as accountable because the decision affects both departments equally

Add the informatics nurse as a third accountable person to break any tie

Change both to responsible so that each leader completes part of the decision

A home health agency gives point-of-care tablets to one nursing team for 6 weeks to identify workflow, connectivity, and training problems before the other teams receive them. Which implementation approach is this?

A direct cutover implementation

In a relational database, the orders table includes a patient_id column that references patients.patient_id . An analyst finds orders whose patient_id matches no row in the patients table. Which database feature, if enforced, would have prevented this?

A foreign key constraint enforcing referential integrity

A database view that joins the orders and patients tables

A primary key constraint on the order ID in the orders table

A NOT NULL constraint on the order date column of orders

A hospital plans to store encrypted backups of its EHR with a cloud service provider. The provider will not have the encryption key. Under HIPAA, as amended by HITECH, how should the provider be treated?

As a business associate requiring an agreement with the hospital

As a conduit that does not need an agreement with the hospital

As a covered entity that is directly responsible to patients

As an exempt vendor because it cannot view the encrypted data

Six weeks after an EHR go-live, a new medication override reason workflow is added. Which training approach is MOST efficient for the experienced nurses who will use it?

A brief targeted e-learning module with a tip sheet at the point of use

Deferral of the content to the next annual competency day

A repeat of the full initial EHR classroom course for every nurse

An email to every nurse containing the vendor's full release notes

Informatics Nurse

Free Informatics Nurse Practice Questions

10 sample questions for the Informatics Nurse, with the correct answer and an explanation for each. No account needed. Try each one before you open the answer.

Sections covered on the exam: Foundations of Practice, System Design Lifecycle, Data Management & Technology.

Question 1 · Foundations of Practice
An informatics nurse has determined that medication reconciliation is often incomplete at discharge because the tool is missing from the discharge workflow. With stakeholders, she now specifies that 95% of discharges should have completed reconciliation within three months of the fix. In the ANA nursing informatics standards of practice, this step BEST reflects which standard?
- A.Planning
- B.Diagnosis, Problems, and Issues Identification
- C.Evaluation
- D.Outcomes Identification
Show answer and explanation
Answer: D. Outcomes Identification
Outcomes Identification is the standard in which the informatics nurse defines expected, measurable results, such as a target reconciliation rate and time frame. Diagnosis, Problems, and Issues Identification is the earlier step of naming the problem, Planning lays out the strategies to reach the outcomes, and Evaluation measures progress after the plan is carried out.
Question 2 · Foundations of Practice
An informatics nurse is updating release-of-information workflows. Under the HIPAA Privacy Rule, which disclosure is exempt from the minimum necessary standard?
- A.Sending claims data to a health plan for payment of a hospital stay
- B.Sending staffing reports with patient names to the hospital's auditors
- C.Sending the full record to a specialist who is treating the patient
- D.Sending case records to an outside agency performing a quality review
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. Sending the full record to a specialist who is treating the patient
The minimum necessary standard does not apply to disclosures to or requests by a health care provider for treatment purposes. Disclosures for payment, health care operations such as quality review, and auditing are all subject to the minimum necessary standard.
Question 3 · System Design Lifecycle
A RACI chart for a hospital's barcode medication administration rollout lists both the chief nursing officer and the director of pharmacy as "A" for the go-live decision. What is the MOST appropriate revision?
- A.Leave both as accountable because the decision affects both departments equally
- B.Add the informatics nurse as a third accountable person to break any tie
- C.Change both to responsible so that each leader completes part of the decision
- D.Assign a single accountable person for the decision and list the other as consulted
Show answer and explanation
Answer: D. Assign a single accountable person for the decision and list the other as consulted
A RACI chart should have exactly one accountable person for each task or decision so ownership is unambiguous. Listing two or three people as accountable diffuses ownership, and responsible denotes doing the work rather than owning the final decision.
Question 4 · System Design Lifecycle
A home health agency gives point-of-care tablets to one nursing team for 6 weeks to identify workflow, connectivity, and training problems before the other teams receive them. Which implementation approach is this?
- A.A pilot implementation
- B.A big-bang implementation
- C.A parallel implementation
- D.A direct cutover implementation
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. A pilot implementation
A pilot introduces the system to a small group first so problems can be found and fixed before broader rollout. Parallel implementation runs old and new systems simultaneously, while big-bang and direct cutover approaches convert everyone at once.
Question 5 · Data Management & Technology
In a relational database, the orders table includes a patient_id column that references patients.patient_id. An analyst finds orders whose patient_id matches no row in the patients table. Which database feature, if enforced, would have prevented this?
- A.A database view that joins the orders and patients tables
- B.A foreign key constraint enforcing referential integrity
- C.A primary key constraint on the order ID in the orders table
- D.A NOT NULL constraint on the order date column of orders
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. A foreign key constraint enforcing referential integrity
A foreign key constraint requires each value in the referencing column to exist in the referenced table's primary key, preventing orphan orders. A primary key on orders guarantees unique order rows but does not check the patient reference, a NOT NULL constraint on a date column is unrelated, and a view only presents data without enforcing rules.
Question 6 · Foundations of Practice
An informatics nurse leads a project to replace an outdated nurse call system. She compares vendor proposals on total cost and long-term support needs, and recommends reusing existing network infrastructure where possible. Which ANA standard of professional performance is she MOST clearly demonstrating?
- A.Quality of practice
- B.Resource stewardship
- C.Leadership
- D.Environmental health
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. Resource stewardship
Resource stewardship involves using appropriate resources to plan and provide services that are safe, effective, and financially responsible, such as comparing total cost and reusing infrastructure. Quality of practice focuses on improving the quality of practice itself, leadership on influencing and guiding others, and environmental health on safe and healthy practice environments.
Question 7 · Foundations of Practice
A hospital plans to store encrypted backups of its EHR with a cloud service provider. The provider will not have the encryption key. Under HIPAA, as amended by HITECH, how should the provider be treated?
- A.As a conduit that does not need an agreement with the hospital
- B.As a covered entity that is directly responsible to patients
- C.As a business associate requiring an agreement with the hospital
- D.As an exempt vendor because it cannot view the encrypted data
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. As a business associate requiring an agreement with the hospital
A cloud service provider that creates, receives, maintains, or transmits ePHI for a covered entity is a business associate even if the data are encrypted and it lacks the key. The conduit exception applies only to transient transmission services, the provider is not itself a covered entity, and encryption does not remove business associate status.
Question 8 · System Design Lifecycle
A hospital's risk register identifies a high-impact risk that its small IT team cannot maintain round-the-clock server support. Leaders decide to contract with the EHR vendor for remote hosting with a service level agreement. Which risk response strategy does this represent?
- A.Mitigate
- B.Transfer
- C.Accept
- D.Avoid
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. Transfer
Transferring a risk shifts responsibility for its management to a third party, typically through a contract, as with vendor hosting under a service level agreement. Avoiding eliminates the activity causing the risk, mitigating reduces the probability or impact internally, and accepting acknowledges the risk without action.
Question 9 · System Design Lifecycle
Six weeks after an EHR go-live, a new medication override reason workflow is added. Which training approach is MOST efficient for the experienced nurses who will use it?
- A.A brief targeted e-learning module with a tip sheet at the point of use
- B.Deferral of the content to the next annual competency day
- C.A repeat of the full initial EHR classroom course for every nurse
- D.An email to every nurse containing the vendor's full release notes
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. A brief targeted e-learning module with a tip sheet at the point of use
Experienced users need only the delta: a short, targeted module plus just-in-time support covers the change efficiently and in time. Repeating the full course wastes time, waiting for the annual competency day leaves nurses untrained while the change is live, and full release notes bury the relevant change in unrelated technical detail.
Question 10 · Data Management & Technology
During an ETL process for a quality data warehouse, each hospital's local lab test codes are mapped to LOINC and temperatures are converted to a single unit. In which ETL phase does this occur?
- A.Transform
- B.Archive
- C.Load
- D.Extract
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. Transform
The transform phase cleans, standardizes, maps codes, and converts units so data from different sources can be compared. Extract pulls data from source systems, load writes the prepared data into the warehouse, and archiving is a separate data lifecycle activity.

Keep practicing for the Informatics Nurse

TTP Prep has 200 Informatics Nurse practice questions with explanations, timed and mock-exam modes, 104 flashcards, interactive lessons, a printable cheat sheet and a readiness score. Start free, no card needed.

Take a free Quick 10 See everything in the Informatics Nurse prep