rubynash

2020 2021 2022 2023 2024

The healthcare industry is developing at an unprecedented rate, and the use of technologies is a fundamental condition for achieving efficiency and maintaining effectiveness in all spheres of health care. The use of electronic health records has already become the gold standard of professionalism in health care. As Ay and Polat (2014) write, electronic health records (EHR) increase the quality of medical and nursing care and raise the overall effectiveness in the healthcare field. Unfortunately, many nurses fail to acknowledge the role of technologies in their practices while others lack the training and knowledge required to use these technologies easily.
Nurses play a fundamental role in promoting the benefits of electronic health records and other technologies. Nurses are the largest healthcare crew group who provide direct care to the patient, determine their needs, and decide which materials will be used where and when, also making them the primary users of the computerized system. Since the end of the 1980s, nurses have been at the forefront of the technology revolution in healthcare. Nevertheless, the rates of technology adoption in nursing remain surprisingly low. Time has come to advance the nursing care onto a higher level of quality performance, while empowering nurses to lead the implementation of effective technologies, including EHR.
The fact that nurses resist the adoption of EHR is quite natural, given that they lack training and awareness of how the system works. In fact, the very process of implementing innovations in practice and realizing their benefits is rather long and enduring. As such, modern society should be prepared to overcome numerous barriers on its way to technologies. Based on Rogers' theory of diffusion of innovations, EHR implementation will entail a profound social change that will change nurses' perceptions of the new technology, its benefits, and possible weaknesses. Society will have to pass all stages of the implementation process, and I must persuade the nurses that the proposed technology displays all essential characteristics of relevant and productive innovation.
Five important characteristics make innovative technologies appealing to nurses. These characteristics include relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, trialability, and observability. The new EHR system matches all these characteristics. Relative advantage is the extent, to which the proposed innovation or initiative is better than the way nurses work today. Naturally, with a higher relative advantage, nurses will find it easier to adopt and use the new technology. At present, the proposed system of electronic health records displays a strong relative advantage as compared with our daily practices. It saves paper, gives a sense of control over time and resources, and provides the content that is better organized and more comprehensive to the reader. Of course, certain delays are possible, especially when it comes to charting. However, I will emphasize the fact that the new system may potentially reduce our paperwork by as much as 99 percent.
Many nurses are scared of the new system because it seems too complex to be used every day. Rogers' theory suggests that complexity is the extent, to which users perceive technologies as being complex and usable. While speaking to nurses, I will focus on the fact that, contrary to the existing beliefs about EHR, it is quite simple and can be successfully used after a brief training course. The system and its interface are user-friendly. With time, nurses will learn to use it automatically. The new system does not require too much writing or thinking, although nurses will need some training to learn how to manage and apply nursing diagnoses.
Obviously, many nurses will question the compatibility of the new system. In other words, they will have questions as to whether the new system fits the existing system of nursing practices, as well as the values, principles, and beliefs pursued by nurses. The answer is simple: the electronic health records application was designed specifically to facilitate the coordination of various care activities in ways that are similar to or better than the current system of nursing care. The new system is developed to allow nurses to focus on nursing diagnoses and medical treatments instead of spending hours on paperwork. Although care coordination remains an issue, no system is without flaws. It will be constantly improved, based on the feedback provided by nurses.
Trialability and observability are the two other characteristics of successful innovation. Trialability means that the application can be tested and used on a small scale. This is exactly what will happen during the training course. This is also what will happen at the initial stages of system implementation. The hospital facility does not want to run a system that has considerable technical deficiencies or presents any usability problems. The purpose of this implementation is to see whether the hospital facility is ready to adopt innovations as challenging and potentially transformational as EHR. The results of this strategy will be observable and visible to everyone in the medical facility, from patients to nurse supervisors. Apart from the reduced amount of paperwork, the new system will definitely reduce the costs of medical care. As a result, nurses will have greater financial resources to invest them in training, nursing care improvements, and other urgent or non-urgent projects.
I will underline the importance of our philosophy, according to which, nurses are the leaders and change agents in implementing new technologies. As of today, nurses make up the largest group of technology users in the entire health care system. The process of implementing technologies is always associated with challenges, but nurses have the skills, capabilities, and potentials needed to make this process smooth. Nurses play a central role in improving health, enhancing health care quality, and managing healthcare costs. This centrality of nurses in all most important health care processes justifies their pivotal role in advocating the meaningful use of EHR. However, the role of nurses in innovations is not limited to implementation. Nurses as the chief advocates of technological advancement are expected to provide their timely feedback and recommend the most urgent changes to facilitate care coordination through technologies. Nurses can also promote stakeholder involvement and explain the benefits of the new system to patients and their families. Overall, the new system will be the result of close and continuous collaboration among nurses and between them and nurse supervisors. The results of the trial implementation will be used to incorporate the necessary improvements and make the system suitable for nurses.
Hopefully, the information and arguments provided in this paper will reduce nurses' resistance to the use of electronic health records. However, the process of implementing EHR will not be easy. Even in case of effective training and broad acceptance of EHR as a model of the future, new challenges may emerge. Nurses should not be afraid of the difficulties awaiting them on their way to improved performance. Nevertheless, it is still essential that nurses receive constant support at all stages of technology implementation, even when it becomes an indispensable component of their professional nursing routines.
Ruby Nash is a content writer on https://writessay.org/literary-research-paper.php. Writers provide academic help for students in all academic fields. Ruby likes writing, traveling and cooking.

2019-10-08 21:33:53, views: 218, Comments: 0