Using Electronic Health Records In Nursing Research

In the medical field there have been a lot of technological advances and making health records electronic is one of them. The days of having a paper health record are almost obsolete. An electronic health record keeps a patient’s medical information and history on a computer which is accessible to more people in less time. I will explain how the continuity, communication, coordination and accountability of the electronic health record can help the medical office. I will explain what can be included in the electronic health record. As an advocate of the electronic health record I will also explain some disadvantages to the electronic system.

In a healthcare world that operates on stringent budgets and margins, we begin to see the need for a higher capacity healthcare delivery system. This in turn puts pressure on the healthcare organizations to ensure higher standards of patient care, and compliance with the reform provisions. However, these are the harsh realities of today’s healthcare environment, a setting in which value does not always equal quality. The use of technology can help to amend some of this by providing higher capacity care without compromising quality; this can be done with the use of such technology as electronic health records (EHRs). This paper will aim to address how EHRs influence healthcare today by expanding upon topics such as funding sources, reimbursement methods, economic factors, socioeconomic factors, business influences, and cost containment.

Electronic health records is a major component in the United States health care system. It has been proven to improve health care quality by saving time and reducing

In the journal article, The Impact of an Integrated Electronic Health Record Adoption on Nursing Care Quality, they discuss how technology can improve quality of care. With electronic health records, nurses can document while at the bedside. Their study confirms that the use of electronic health records can improve patient quality of care (Walker-Czyz, 2016.)

The university of Arkanaza is preparing future nurses for using EHR and evidence-base practices by peaking the interest of health professional through training and seminars. As describe in the previous article is important for the facility providing education to future nurses to maintain a level of positivity about electronic health record. Educational organizations need to be onboard with this new technology to better serve patients efficiently. EHR, is important part of reducing errors, patient safety, and improving standards of care. As nurses its important to maintain a level of honesty and accountability. The use of EHR gives nurses the opportunity to promote proper documentaiton standdards for nurses and other care professionals. The

Initially, the topic the Electronic Health Record can simply be typed into a search engine such as Google.com. This step can help to establish keywords. The drawback with using a search engine is the resulting 200,000 search results, many of these results are loosely connect to the topic the Electronic Health Record and nursing. The initial use of a search engine can provide a general idea of the availability of resources and references. The search engine does not allow the researcher the ability to add limiters or refine results. After establishing a list of keywords including, Charting Technology, Nursing informatics, Patient data collection, Digital Health Records, Electronic Heath Documentation in EBSCOHost. Utilizing CINAHL, the nurse researcher should conduct a “simple search” in EBSCOHost. The simple search of the keywords, Electronic Health Record provided 3,949 full-text results of these results, many of the articles that only had a small relation to nursing and nursing informatics. Further, the inclusion of the keywords Electronic Health Record AND Nursing, with the limiters set for full text only, using the “advanced search” provided 34 full text articles. The advanced search provided articles, which directly applied to electronic health records, specifically dealing with nursing informatics. The ability to search the overall topic and

In the modern world technology is everywhere and it affects everyone’s daily life. People are constantly attached to cell phones, laptops, and other electronics, which all have affected how people live their lives. Technology is also a large part of the healthcare system today. There are many electronics and technologies that are used in health care, such as electronic health record, medication bar code scanning, electronic documentation, telenursing, and there are many more forms of technology that impact nursing. One technology that stands out is the electronic health record. The electronic health record, also referred to as EHR, is an electronic version of a patient’s chart, and it contains is a list of the patient’s current medications, allergies, laboratory results, diagnoses, immunization dates, images, treatments, and medical history (“Learn EHR Basics,” 2014). The purpose of the electronic health record is to have a patient’s health care record available to health care providers nationwide, but the patient can decide who has access to their record (Edwards, Chiweda, Oyinka, McKay, & Wiles, 2011). The electronic health record is a very important technology in health care and it impacts nurses, nursing care, and has a significant impact on patient outcomes.

The use of IT in the healthcare field has been a strategic focus for necessary improvement that stands to enable more cost effective, higher-quality, and far safer patient care according to the Committee on Data Standards for Patient Safety (2003). The National quality forum conceptualized the idea of meaningful use to the nursing fraternity and believed that they were the most critical link in patient care and health delivery and hence technology tools of EHR would be best used by them The purpose of the electronic health records was to improve the health of population, coordination of care, safety improvement in patients undergoing critical and long term care, and patient and family engagement in timely access of

The success of the implementation of the electronic health record was based on employee attitude, listening to concerns and feedback, including bedside nurses in the workflow analysis and vendor selection, collaborations with other organizations utilizing the same electronic health record, staffing well during the initial implementation, and adequate training of staff (Maust, 2012). The challenges encountered were due to some negative employee attitude, not enough education for nursing staff, policies and procedures that do not reflect the new electronic health record, and lack of education for patients (Maust, 2012). The conclusion of this article emphasized the importance of investing in training nursing staff and the role of nurse educators in providing adequate information prior to implementing a new electronic health record (Maust,

As health care systems worldwide move toward instituting evidence based practice, its implementation can be challenging (TIGER Initiative, 2007). The amount and difficulty of information nurses are likely to accomplish continues to rise exponentially (Bernard, Nash and O’Brien, 2005). Providing consistent, effective, customised care requires a degree of mastery of data and management that will be attainable only with the improved use of information technology (Bates and Gawande, 2003).

This paper will identify the use of Electronic Health Records and how nursing plays an important role. Emerging in the early 2000’s, utilizing Electronic Health Records have quickly become a part of normal practice. An EHR could help prevent dangerous medical mistakes, decrease in medical costs, and an overall improvement in medical care. Patients are often taking multiple medications, forget to mention important procedures/diagnoses to providers, and at times fail to follow up with providers. Maintaining an EHR could help tack data, identify patients who are due for preventative screenings and visits, monitor VS, & improve overall quality of care in a practice. Nurse informaticists play an important role in the

Health Information Technology (HIT) has grown and brought about many changes in the healthcare industry. These changes have transformed nursing care, improved patient outcomes, patient safety and satisfaction as there is now the ability to collect and share knowledge around the world. It is through this knowledge sharing that we now have improved understand of nurse-sensitive indicators that have provided they necessary data to develop evidence-based clinical pathways, all with the goal of providing safer patient care and improving patient outcomes.

I am going to take it that the electronic information system is the software that nurses must be using which I’ve been talking about. This system is awesome, every time I’ve seen a nurse use this software is incredible. The component of an EHR that I know of has documentation questions with options to choose from to conclude your assessment findings based on that particular system. Every single system has its own way of documenting on a certain bodily system and the nursing assessments found on that particular patient. A pro I can give based on this information software is that it will not let you administer the wrong medication and dosage to the wrong patient due to the fact that the computer screen will give you an error in a screen message

According to Hart (as cited in Thede, 2012) Informatics is “a combination of computer science, information science, and nursing science designed to assist in the management and processing of nursing data, information, and knowledge to support the practice of nursing and the delivery of nursing care” (Thede, 2012). There have been many different contributions to healthcare since the evolvement of healthcare informatics. Many of the different contributions as allowed health care providers to provide the optimal care to their patients. There were two AHRQ- funded studies that showed tools provide from the computer generated reports increased preventive care measures (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2002). The study goes on to state that physicians who received reminders ordered more preventive care measures, had an increase in vaccination rates, increased there compliance for colon cancer screening by 50 to 133 %, and overall increased their compliance rate from 10 to 15% overall (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2002). Some downfalls to not using electronic medical records is hand writing that is illegible, unorganized and higher chance of losing records or misplacing records, and duplicate records that are not easily shared among providers (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2002).

In today’s medical field technology plays a big role when it comes to patient care. Technology is huge when it comes to giving the patient the best type of quality care when they are in the hospital. In the old days people would just write it down on a sheet of paper and record it by hand, which caused mistakes. Now with the Electronic Health Record those mistakes are drastically declining. Statistics have shown that using the Electronic Health Record has lowered Nursing mistakes as well as improved patient care. Our society has progressed through the years and has been introduced with the Electronic Health Record which has drastically improved our health care system. The Electronic Health Record provides great communication between