Week 8 - How Nurses affect Informatics
As we have been discussing over the duration of this class, informatics is affecting the way nurses provide care, it is affecting a nurse’s work load and the way he or she manages a client’s care. A perspective that was brought on by discussion this week was, “How can Nurses affect informatics?”, What are the things we can do to bring change to the world of nursing and how informatics is used in health care. The discussion this week was directly linked to how nurses can affect the use of Electronic Health Records Systems (EHRS), however this is not the only way nurses can affect change in informatics.
One of the questions posed was: “Should nurses be involved in the change of ERHS, if so why?” Based on discussion in class, I, alongside strong scholarly-based evidence, believe that nurses must be involved in the development and change of EHRS. Nurses are responsible for gathering, synthesizing and sharing data presented by the client to the health care team; this is often a responsibility for the nurse because they spend the most amount of time with the client (Sassen, 2009). Nurses act as advocators for the patient and in order to advocate for them using our ability to decrease the gaps in care (Howell, 2013), we must be able to get the appropriate information to the rest of the care team.
If we are not consulted in the changes made to the EHRS, then we will have no input as to what the records contain, how it is presented or what the focus of the record is. Imagine the affect it would have on your role as a nurse to use a system that is simply biomedically based, it would take away many aspects of your practice that are very important. As individuals who work as “care coordinators, health coaches, disease managers and community liaisons” (Howell, 2013) it is very important that the system you are using to document on is one that includes facets of your profession that are important. Nurses have different scopes of practice than other health care providers - some social, emotional and psychosocial data - that we gather could go unnoticed in a system that doesn’t accommodate for that type of information (Sassen, 2009).
Nurses facilitate, advocate for and are the main users of EHRS. Nurses are the people who will determine their success, and a system is only as good as its users. Appropriate care and leadership amongst the nursing staff and all others involved are dependent on the configurations of people, resources, processes, and technology (Mitchell, 2012), therefore we as leaders must facilitate the use and development of ERHS. In Payne’s article “The implementation of electronic clinical documentation: Using Lewin’s change management theory”, it is suggested that by using Lewin’s models of “unfreezing, implementing change, and refreezing” we can affect the outcome of EHRS (2013). It is suggested that we use techniques such as identifying barriers to change and driving forces to assist change, obtaining opinions and suggestions of others, and making appropriate changes are all effective in implementing change in a nursing environment (Payne, 2013).
Since nurses are the front line workers and know best how technology can help patients and themselves. It is important that nurses be involved in all aspects from the planning to the implementation of ERHS and other technologies to ensure our patients get the best type of care possible and that they remain the center of our work (Doran, Reid-Haughian, Chilcote & Bai, 2013).
Doran, D., Reid-Haughian, C., Chilcote, A., & Bai, Y. (2013). A formatice evaluation of nurses’ use of electronic devices in a home care setting. Canadan Journal Of Nursing Research, 45(1), 54-73.
Howell, J. W. (2013). The Changing Role of Nurses. Hospitals and Health Networks. Retrieved from: http://www.hhnmag.com/hhnmag/jsp/articledisplay.jsp?dcrpath=HHNMAG/Article/data/03MAR2012/0312HHN_FEA_movingforward&domain=HHNMAG
Payne, S. (2013). The implementation of electronic clinical documentation: Using Lewin's change management theory. Canadian Journal of Nursing Informatics, 8(1).
Sassen, J. E. (2009). Love, Hate, or Indifference How Nurses Really Feel About The Health Records System. CIN: Computer, Informatics, Nursing. 27(5). 281-287
Mitchell, P., Wynia, M., Golden, R., McNellis, B., Okun, S., Webb, E., Rohrbach, V., & Von Kohorn, I. (2012). Core Principles & Values of Effective Team-Based Health Care. Institute of Medicine. Retrieved from https://www.nationalahec.org/pdfs/VSRT-Team-Based-Care-Principles-values.pdf