Alvin D. Jeffery, MSN, RN-BC, CCRN, FNP-BC, is an education consultant at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and an adjunct instructor at several colleges and universities. Jeffery has served as the unit-based educator in a pediatric intensive-care unit at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and is board certified in nursing professional development.
Robin L. Jarvis, MS, SPHR, is principal of R. L. Jarvis & Associates, providing leadership development and strategic facilitation. Working in learning development and human resources for more than 20 years, Jarvis specializes in cross-cultural communication, accelerated learning, instructional design, leadership development, and facilitation, and she has co-presented at International Society for Performance Improvement conferences on the topic of orientation and onboarding. In 1996, she received a SEMATECH corporate award for the orientation program she co-designed.
As knowledge is developed more rapidly than ever before and technology becomes more sophisticated, the work of nurses becomes increasingly complex. From frequently changing regulations to learning to operate new technology, there are many things that nurses are expected to know and do while caring for patients and their families. Many systems that were designed to improve nurses’ workflows actually created barriers to delivering optimal nursing care, and one of the biggest challenges with which nurses are faced today is that electronic/computerized health records are not user-friendly for the nurses or the patients they serve.
If you have been to a clinic or hospital appointment lately, you have probably seen how frequently the nurses and other healthcare providers are looking at the computer screen. Unfortunately, many patients and nurses feel that face-to-face time and personal connection have decreased due to the need for entering information into the computer. As a researcher and trainer, I have heard nurses voice concern that they chart more than they do at times. Although technology has great potential for integrating information from a wide range of sources, getting all of that data and information into the patient’s record can be fairly time-consuming.
Even with more technologically-savvy nurses entering the profession, the usability of these electronic systems lags behind most software applications. This has been a result of several complex factors, but probably the biggest impetus was a need for any electronic form of documentation now rather than the perfect system later. Additionally, several studies have noted that different healthcare providers gather information about patients in different methods. As we move forward, we will need software developers and healthcare providers to work side-by-side in creating better systems – functional systems that appropriately manage information but that are also user-friendly.
Most healthcare providers acknowledge the benefit and need of electronic health records because they can prevent errors, increase the speed of several tasks, and allow the chart to move with the patient to different clinics and specialties. However, we still have a way to go before they’re as easy to operate as some of our newer technologies like tablets and smart phones.
Healthcare providers and the patients they serve are facing an increasing number challenges with political and economic landscape changes along with more complex and chronic diseases than historically encountered. The ability for healthcare technology to have an impact on these conditions has kept pace with several of these changes, but unfortunately, the complexity of its use has disproportionately increased to the usability of many non-healthcare software applications.
Professional organizations have been speaking up on the need for better usability, and I believe their voices are growing louder. But it will probably take the combined voice of all healthcare disciplines and the patients we serve to see the change we need from these systems. As knowledge is developed more rapidly than ever before and technology becomes more sophisticated, the work of nurses becomes increasingly complex. From frequently changing regulations to learning to operate new technology, there are many things that nurses are expected to know and do while caring for patients and their families. Many systems that were designed to improve nurses’ workflows actually created barriers to delivering optimal nursing care, and one of the biggest challenges with which nurses are faced today is that electronic/computerized health records are not user-friendly for the nurses or the patients they serve.
