Health informatics: perception of graduands about its application in the nursing professional practice

Objective: To understand the perception of nursing students on the application of informatics in health from the perspective of competencies recommended by the National Curricular Guidelines of the Nursing undergraduate course. Methods: Exploratory, descriptive study with a quantitative approach, performed with 84 Nursing students from the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), who had attended the Informatics Applied to Nursing subject between the years 2014 and 2015. A semi-structured instrument was used for data collection and analysis, descriptive statistics. Results: More than 50% of the students perceived usefulness, advantages and disadvantages of the classes of health information systems, showing inconsistencies in the perception regarding their application in practical nursing. Conclusion: The findings showed that, although most students have knowledge about different classes of tools of information and communication technologies and their applications, gaps regarding some concepts and processes of use were evidenced.