EHR ADVANCEMENT IN NURSING  AND ITS RISKS, BENEFITS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS.

EHR ADVANCEMENT IN NURSING  AND ITS RISKS, BENEFITS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS.

EHR IN NURSING

Introduction

EHR is an electronic health record for documentation of patients’ medical files that retrieve data useful in enhancing patients’ safety evaluating care, quality, and maximizing and measuring staffing needs for the medical institution. EHR is also maintained by providers over time and may include a vast number of medical information about patient’s history conditions, progress notes, medications, vital signs, laboratory information, and radiology reports. (CMS records). This form of technology allows nurses to share their patient’s data with the IT department and vendors. These descriptions made in the site of recommendations given and reflections at improving documentation and encouraging nurses to develop skills in documenting and informatics skills, which help in data recording for their patients. (ANA records)

This paper will vitally concentrate on it’s the reasons for its adoption, and how it has improved services in the health care sector, also its will tackle more about its risks and the recommendations for best ways to adopt this technology.

EHR  as a means and way to change caregivers, nurses, and medical practitioners take in patients’ medical information.it has enhanced and benefited in improved care, safety, quality, and coordination as well as gauging staffing needs for every institution(cipriano.et.al.2013). This technological advancement has been very beneficial because it has created a collaboration between the nurses and the IT department in relaying real-time communication among health care providers. After all, documents can be shared to enhance study in proportions never attempted. (ANA

There are vast benefits of EHR, which include better legibility. Historically illegibility was a big issue when it came to reading prescriptions and medical procedures been medical practitioners because of the poor handwriting of medical teams, which hampered the flow of services between the medical experts and the patients on solving the issues they were facing. EHR brought more clear and precise approaches because it allowed for input of information of patients in the systems via machines, which were easily read and understood between practitioners.

It also assisted the patient’s outcome were due to this technology is being integrated with the bar code system that made it easy for nurses to identify clear without mistakes the medication treatment for the patients. For instance, if a nurse scans a wrong medication, then an alert pops up for false identification of prescription; this made it easy for real-time changing and correction, thus reducing the chances of the wrong diagnosis for the patients. Bar codes also came in handy for purposes of giving information on the identity of the patient, report of the medication, and administration of doses, which helped in broadening the scope of the administration patient’s safety zone.

EHR has assisted in improving treatment and clinical outcomes, which has drastically brought a reduction in duplication of tests for patients this making all analyses accessible to all the clinicians involved in patients’ healthcare and can be viewed from time to time when the need arises. EHR can view X-ray, radiology, laboratory, and clinicians information, which is reducing an additional design and development cost for many medical facilities such that saving investments for a medical institution to focus on others. EHR had played a significant role in the security of protecting patients’ data and confidentiality and comfortable for purposes of audit trails for medical institutions and in the process securing of patients details which show who accessed the medical records and when what was the individual doing while accessing each file.

EHR has empowered the patient to be their own advocate because they can access their own medical records and information through the patients portal and they can read, print and scan this to their medical providers.

The challenges of EHR can never go unnoticed because most nurses believe that using this technology is time-consuming for their patients. Nurses are always in the front line, but administrations chose EHR, which made it impossible for the nurses to in the discussion of their patients, which created an avenue for wrong accusations if the EHR didn’t meet the patient’s needs on a timely manner. Lack of training for nurses also created a hindrance for EHR to effectively perform its mandate nurses have a lot of work with lots of information without adequately preparing them for the change.

The risks incurred by this technology are at the core of the institution because there is no seamless relation between the nurses’ verdict on patients with other medical practitioners, which has created a clear cut position on sabotage of patients’ dispensation of resources between the institutions and the patients’ needs. Patient sharing information procedure is also a risk because most of the time if the patient is incapacitated to give their consent on an emergency, this can be unsafe for the patient’s life, which most of the time is assumed.  Healthcare professionals share information with a growing range of professional colleagues often on multiple sites; however, a problem can arise in the continuity of care if the patient’s report is not being relayed, which poses a clinical risk to the patient’s life. (ANA website)

The recommendations for EHR consist of so many factors, mostly improving the generous size, fonts, adequate lighting for darkening rooms, and also handheld devices used to bar code and scan medications from saving time with patients. Nurses also stated that data already connected within the EHR needs to be in a nurse-patient-safety-sensitive manner. Programming of drug administration processes at the point of patient contact will strategically place tips and alerts, which will lessen errors drastically. Encouraging platforms for patients’ approval, which should be possible with the permission of third parties, should only be possible with the consent of the patients unless in cases of emergency (book by Dipak Kalra).

REFERENCES.

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2015). Medication errors. Retrieved from http://psnet.ahrq.gov/primer.aspx?primerID=23

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2014). National quality strategy: Overview. Retrieved from www.ahrq.gov/workingforquality/nqs/overview.htm.

AHIMA Workgroup. (2011). Problem list guidance in the EHR. Journal of AHIMA, 82 (9), 52-58.

American Nurses Association (ANA). (2010). Nursing: Scope and standards of practice. Silver Springs, MD: Nursesbooks.org.

ANA. (2006). Recognized terminologies and data element sets. Retrieved from ana.nursingworld.org/npii/terminologies.htm

Apsey, H. A., Coan, K. E., Castro, J. C., Jameson, K. A., & Slinkert, R. T., & Cook, C.B. (2013). Overcoming clinical inertia in the management of postoperative patients with diabetes. Endocrinology Practice, 20(4), 320-328. doi:10.4158EP13366.OR

Atherton, J. S. (2013). The experiential learning cycle. Retrieved from www.learningandteaching.info/learning/experience.htmL.

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