Nurses’ Critical Role in Success of EHRs
Post the following:
• Explain how nurses impact the implementation and adoption of Health IT systems in your organization or one with which you are familiar. If your organization or one with which you are familiar has not adopted Health IT systems, use another major change initiative that impacts nursing practice as an example.Nurses’ Critical Role in Success of EHRs
• Examine a workaround or a workflow issue that has impacted you in your work setting.
• Discuss the impact of the workaround or workflow issue. Was a policy formulated in response or were the issues analyzed and solutions implemented to change the process? Provide details about the change that occurred or the policy implementation process and nursing involvement in the solution.
Require readings
Hebda, T., & Czar, P. (2013). Handbook of informatics for nurses and healthcare professionals (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
• Chapter 10, “System Implementation and Maintenance” (pp. 194–209)
• Chapter 11, “Information Systems Training” (pp. 210–231
http://www.clinical-innovation.com/topics/policy/himss-nursings-critical-role-ehr-success-0?nopaging=1
McCartney, P. (2014). Human factors, usability, and the electronic health record. MCN: The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing, 39(5), 333.Nurses’ Critical Role in Success of EHRs
Note: You will access this article from the Walden Library databases.
https://class.waldenu.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/USW1/201950_03/BS_NURS/NURS_3110/readings/USW1_NURS_3110_Week04_Seaman_2015.pdf
How Nurses Impact the Implementation and Adoption of the Health IT System In My Organization
According to Kutney-Lee et al., (2019), nurses have a vital role in general medical practice. They actively participate in nearly all aspects of care and can potentially provide invaluable insights within work environments. It is for this reason that they are considered to be of essence in the adoption process of EHRs. In my organization, nurses are well informed of the HIPAA standards. Therefore, they are looked up to provide input in the EHRs adoption and implementation process on the security measures that can be used to safeguard personal health information (Sittig & Singh, 2017). Besides, since they are involved in all aspects of care, their insights influenced the installation of cloud-based EHRs in the organization to ensure that patient’s records and charts could easily be accessed from any tablet and computer. As noted by Lopez & Fahey (2018), cloud-based EHRs are also inexpensive. Nurses also provide feedback on the effectiveness and efficiency of an EHRs system. Based on the feedback provided, the IT staff can determine areas which need improvements to promote efficiency and effectiveness (Ericson et al., 2017).
Workflow Issue That Has Impacted My Work Setting
A major workflow issue in my organization is that since the adoption of an EHRs system, there has been a gradual increase in overlays and duplicate medical records. As noted by Cifuentes et al., (2015), duplicate medical records negatively impact care delivery and are associated with preventable mortalities and morbidities in hospital settings. Most of the duplicates are as a result of patient identification errors making patients be linked to more than one medical record. There are also partial duplicates where only a part of a patient’s medical history is captured. In other instances, patient records are overwritten with the data from another patient’s records leading to one combined and inaccurate record.
Impact of the Workflow Issue
Missing data and improper information have made the organization to lose a lot of finances in reimbursements, administration inefficiencies, and poor utilization of resources, a lot of liabilities, compromised care, medication errors and threats to patient safety (Cifuentes et al., (2015). In order to address this issue, the organization leadership through the IT department organized a thorough data clean-up exercise, implemented two levels of cleaning data at the point of care using patient identification technologies (biometrics, palm-vein recognition, and smart cards) at all registration points(Cifuentes et al., 2015).Nurses’ Critical Role in Success of EHRs
References
Cifuentes, M., Davis, M., Fernald, D., Gunn, R., Dickinson, P., & Cohen, D. J. (2015). Electronic health record challenges, workarounds, and solutions observed in practices integrating behavioral health and primary care. The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, 28(Supplement 1), S63-S72.
Ericson, L., Hammar, T., Schönström, N., & Petersson, G. (2017). Stakeholder consensus on the purpose of clinical evaluation of electronic health records is required. Health policy and technology, 6(2), 152-160.
Kutney-Lee, A., Sloane, D. M., Bowles, K. H., Burns, L. R., & Aiken, L. H. (2019). Electronic Health Record Adoption and Nurse Reports of Usability and Quality of Care: The Role of Work Environment. Applied clinical informatics, 10(01), 129-139.
Lopez, K. D., & Fahey, L. (2018). Advocating for greater usability in clinical technologies: The role of the practicing nurse. Critical care nursing clinics of North America, 30(2), 247-257.
Sittig, D. F., & Singh, H. (2017). Toward more proactive approaches to safety in the electronic health record Era. Joint Commission journal on quality and patient safety, 43(10), 540-547.Nurses’ Critical Role in Success of EHRs