After working in nursing administrative roles for 25 years,
jobs such as charge nurse, nursing supervisor, nurse manager, and director, I
was captivated by the idea that the care process could always be re-evaluated
and improved upon and that better care delivery and outcomes could be achieved. I was never satisfied with the status quo and
continuously looked for ways to improve clinical outcomes, improve staff efficiency
and satisfaction, and engage patients and caregivers as self-care agents. The
challenge to me was how to make systems easier to learn so as to increase the
probability of adoption. I was in search
of techniques there were evidence based – techniques that yielded lower
complication rates, raised patient satisfaction, improved staff attrition
rates, and increased staff satisfaction. To me, the opportunities to improve
were endless; yet, there were so many stakeholders to engage and so many issues
to address.
At the same time I was watching my nonprofessional life
improve, with access to mobile devices, smart TVs, on line banking, and best of
all on line shopping. So why was the
healthcare delivery system so slow to embrace technology? I wondered how technology could enhance care
delivery processes, the same way it had my everyday life. I was struck by this question and, although I
did not know the answer, I did know there were IT professionals telling me that
EHRs would improve healthcare delivery. EHR
software sales staff touted that the EHR would improve health care record
keeping and support provider decision-making.
So, at first, I welcomed the computers being placed on the nursing
units. As the computers were deployed by our technology staff, I came to view
the computers as large heat generating devices that consumed space, which was
once available for multiple charting functions and now supported only one. I watched in horror as lines to access the
computer formed. I observed and concluded that simply adding computers to the
unit was not going to improve things. In
fact this approach actually created workflow problems and, in some cases,
exacerbated workflow issues that had already existed in our paper-based record
system.
Lesson Learned: There
are number of factors to be considered when deploying EHRs and some are not as
obvious as others.
No comments:
Post a Comment