with Healthcare Information Systems.
GRADED
Share your experiences with healthcare information systems, past or present. Has it been
an easy transition or difficult? Why do you believe your experience has been positive or
negative? If you are currently not working, how has the medical record exposure in
nursing school impacted your current knowledge?
As a nurse who has only been practicing for six months, I’ve never experienced nursing
without healthcare information systems, so it’s difficult for me to speak of the transition.
I’ve only known technology driven nursing, but so far, I believe my experience to be a
positive one. According to our lesson this week, “when the patient information is in
electronic form, we call it an electronic health record”. At my institution, we use an
electronic health record called EPIC, which is all-inclusive. All disciplines from nurses to
physicians to pharmacists to radiologists, etc are able to access the patient chart and add
information. I believe the EHR has greatly helped to reduce errors, as many components
within the system talk to each other (Chamberlain College of Nursing, 2017).
According to Health IT, EHR’s are safer for patients as well as they enhance privacy and
security of patient data, via encoding and encryption of servers. I think that I will always
be a little hesitant of this though, because we hear everyday on the news about different
types of hackers and the information they are able to steal. I do, however, love that all the
information is easily accessible in one place – although there are so many facets that I
still don’t know about! When I began my career, they gave us approximately 8 hours of
EHR training and there are still so many parts of the chart that I don’t know how to
access, so the one thing I wish they offered was more extensive training for those who
wish to learn more, or even a refresher course for the areas they went over too quickly.
;-)
References
Chamberlain College of Nursing, Week 2 Lesson 2017
https://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/faqs/what-electronic-health-record-ehr
Usability and interoperability are major issues to consider in the development of
Healthcare Information Systems (HIS). How do your organization’s systems address
these issues in terms of transfer of information versus re-entry at various points in the
system (emergency department, inpatient, and home care)? With the knowledge you have
gained from your readings, what evidence-based suggestions will you make to improve
your systems?
According to this week’s lesson, usability is defined as “the promotion of clinical
productivity and user satisfaction” and interoperability is defined as the allowance of
meaningful exchange of information between at least two entities -- retaining original
meaning of data.” I know our electronic health record, called EPIC, allows the immediate