Health Information Technology, Patient Safety,

and Professional Nursing Care Documentation in

Acute Care Settings

Prepared by:

Adams, Maria Isabel R.

Amandy, Micahel

BSN-2A
Summary

The article is about the views and experiences of nurses in Missouri Nurses Association
about the growing technology today and how it is used in health care. The goal of this article is
to enhance the scope of nursing informatics by categorizing views and experiences of nurses as
expressed by members of the MONA NPC and to enhance the computer vocabulary of all nurses
so that it would be a great help for them in minimizing their works.

Electronic health record or EHR is a version of patient’s chart but in a digital form. In
this article, it show that nurses see electronic health record as a useful tool in enhancing patient
safety, evaluating care quality and improving care coordination between the patient and the heath
care provider, maximizing efficiency, and measuring staffing needs. But also, nurses experienced
dissatisfaction using the electronic health in terms of its design, slow and complicated electronic
processes, lack of interoperability of computer systems between provider offices, hospitals,
extended care facilities, home health agencies, community health centers and schools leading to
poor coordination of different health organization. They demanded that the electronic health
record improve its user friendliness and build in efficient and timely access to laboratory results
for all medication providers advanced practice registered nurses, pharmacists, and other direct
care nurses and not just focus on identifying patients but also showing the complete chart and
health history of the patient. Also, The nurses stated that the patient-nurses interaction will be
less in terms of dedicating time on interviewing redundant information because of the
advancement of technologies thus it will provide the identification of health records and status of
health in one barcode scanning therefore if patient ask for consultation in other health care
facilities the initial data of the patient would be extracted automatically by just one scan of a
barcode.

In addition, the nurses asked more of the capability of the barcoding system, they
demanded the limitation of its function. Thus they suggested that by including the identification
and evaluation of the appropriateness of the drug dose and route, given the drug’s specific
therapeutic goal and respond to an enhanced, real-time medication contraindication/ drug
interaction check with electronic health record, by linking the drug on the same screen with the
most recent, clinically relevant laboratory values because according to them it will aid more in
early prevention of medication errors. Also, in this article it also shows that not all nurses are
computer literate which made them having difficulties on adapting to the use of electronic health
record system and causing a delay on delivering a proper healthcare to their patients. And
prioritization of diagnoses and transparency of the nursing process was discussed in this article.
In this, it said that the nurses should make the nursing process more transparent in the EHR for
efficient prioritization of problems in case of a emergency needs.

The remaining content of the article discussed the benefits or advantages of electronic
health record and other nursing informatics related things. The journal stated that documentation
is less time consuming and that the readability compared to traditional written documents is more
easier, for penmanship was not anymore an issue. Using the electronic health record stated that
it reduces wasted resources being an environment friendly.
Insights

Based on our understanding, this article is being the voice of health care team who uses
technology such as electronic health record in hospitals and identifying each technologies
benefits in services. EHR or electronic health record is such a helpful tool that keep track of the
health status and services encountered and the most beautiful thing about it is that health care
team can access it with permission online, if the data of the patient about the state of health is
available online and that health care team can access it, delivering the health care service to the
patient would be so much efficient and successful than starting all over again to interview the
patient like biographical data, health history, family history, etc. thus dedicating less time on
literature and paper works and giving more time in caring for patients or being at the bedside of
the patients.

Barcode medication system administration was also introduced in this article, based on
our understanding it helps the health care provider to lessen the medication errors and this will
help in aiding for better nurse-patient relationship. This shows that in order to administer
medication a bedside computer can initially scan the medications to be administered and will
determine if the medication is rightfully appropriate to the patient, this technological
functionality is such a great help because everything is instant and everything is accurate
therefore the delivery of care is at a high performance level and that errors are less.

As the generations goes by, technologies also emerges and it also emerges in health care
system. This emerging technology helps us to have a quality life by giving us a decent and
righteous information which will be the basis of providing health care to the patient. But there is
still some disadvantages to it because hackers may interfere with a government technology and
can actually manipulate it in worse case, they use it for criminal activity. And because we all
know that in technologies our work can be more easier but the more it is easier the more it is
likely prone to danger. And also, it needs a lot of storage in order to cater and keep all the
patient’s records.

This article talks about many issues that is connected in nursing informatics but it focused
more on the Electronic health record system of the institution which we think is somewhat good
because it will help them to further develop their health care delivery system and it will aid in
early preventions of further accidents or malpractice. And this will give them a less paper works
in which we saw it as a way for a good and better nurse-patient relationship.

Implications

The implication of this article is that it gives attention in introducing technologies into the
health care system. This journal helps the developers of the technologies used in health care
system identifies the weaknesses in hardware and software, by being the voice to the ones who
uses their inventions. Other implications of this journal is that by introducing the technologies
and their advantages, other health care facilities who is currently not harnessing the use and
benefits of the technologies will be persuaded to import the technologies in their health care
facilities. This article sought to give importance to the electronic health record system not just in
Missouri but in all hospitals in the world if possible. This article would have a great implication
to the nursing field as it would widen the views and perspective of other hospital administrations
about the uses of electronic health record and will pursue them to acquire the system in their
institutions. As to electronic health record system, this also would be efficient in delivering a
healthcare because this can be use in avoiding waste, such as waste of equipment, ideas, and
supplies. This also can contribute to the nursing field when it comes on paper works, the
documentation and planning of care would be more realistic and efficient. Then it will cost less
paper works which means nurses may have time to be with their patients. Thus, this article would
be a great help to the nursing profession because it can contribute to the development of plans
and strategies for the patient’s safety and quality of care. This will also help in enhancing the
informatics vocabulary of direct care nurses and will help them to build their confidence in their
in performing their task in delivering a health care in consideration of patient safety, care quality
and the documentation of care.
Criticization

The journals content is only focused on the views of nurses of Missouri association
therefore there is more information to be discovered if the population of the views is much more
broader than only focusing on one group of health care provider. In this article, the use of words
is not easily understandable, with this, readers may not understand what the writer wants to say.
The author of this article should lessen the use of highfalutin words so that the reads can easily
understand the content of the article. The journal didn’t include any images of the technology
that they are saying, in that case the readers who have no background the topic being tackled in
this article. The function and benefit of the technology in the health care practice was mentioned
but the safety and security of its function was not mentioned. The writer of this article should
have paid attention to the safety and security of its function.

Conclusion

The article tackles about the views of nurses in Missouri association and gave examples
of hardware that is currently used in there vicinity. This article also tackles about the broader
informatics concern which is related to electronic health record system. We all know that
technologies are really such a helpful plugin in delivering health care services to patients. It is
efficient and saves information in a cloud storage in the world of internet. Through its benefits
there are also disadvantages vulnerable to it, the more faster it delivers services the more faster it
can also be devastated, just like delivering medications via intravenous route. We therefore
conclude that this article contains a different views and perspective of nurses in Missouri Nurses
Association which according to them the electronic health record cannot address the
documentation insufficiency in relationship to that they encourage each nurses to identify
themselves in a process and try to contribute to the issues. It also shows that if the nurses know
how to document properly then it is more likely to develop a good working relationship with
each personnel and their work may become more easier. They have given three scenarios in
which a reader of this article can reflect on, but as stated in this article, that regardless of the
scenario in which you best fit, you should act smartly upon your reflections with an objective or
goal of improving the delivery of health care, improving education of all the nurses and hospital
administration globally. Also, interoperability issues stays as a significant health information
technology concerns. This article shows the goal of the writer and that is to help empower direct
care nurses and the nursing profession for better articulation of nursing informatics concerns and
value to improve the role of the electronic health record in making visible in the practice of
nursing.

Recommendation

Our recommendation to this article is to broaden their population of extracting opinions

and views about the use of technologies in the health care facilities, doing so a much more
information will arise base on empirical practices. Based on the article, we recommend to give
more time and attention to the needs of the nurses especially if it is for delivering a proper health
for the patient, because as we can see, our nurses can still give more for their patients if their
sources are not limited. As for the electronic health record, we recommend that the developer
should have an additional feature not just focusing on medication administration and
identification of the patient so that the time intended for paper works and documentation can be
utilized for patient-nurse interactions. And because of modernization of technologies we
therefore recommend that all nurse must be computer literate so that the manipulations or the use
of electronic health record would be easy for them and will help them to go beyond the trends of
this generations. We also recommend to the institutions that is using the electronic health record
system to have an ample time for training the nurses and other personnel on how to use the
electronic health record system properly so that nurses won’t have a hard time on using and
troubleshooting in the electronic health record. And also, for better communication and efficient
work we also recommend that the nurses and IT committee should have an interrelationship to
each other so that they would easily understand the needs of one another in order to work
properly. Also, the journal should include images of the instrument or technology that they are
talking about, so that the readers can understand easily the issues being tackled and so that they
can visualize the use of technology in health care system.