The vast majority of nurses are not happy with their inpatient EHR systems, according to a survey from Black Book Market Research.
Of the almost 14,000 nurses surveyed, 85 percent said they struggle continually with their EHR. Common complaints include negative impacts to nurse-patient communication (90 percent) and no improvement to communication between nurses and the rest of the care team (94 percent).
Most (88 percent) of the surveyed nurses say the troubles stem from hospital administrators who selected EHR systems based on price or government incentives rather than the EHR's ability to improve patient care. Many point to lack of nursing involvement when the EHR selection was made — 98 percent of nurses say they have never been included in an IT decision or design, and 84 percent of nursing administrators in nonprofit organizations and 97 percent of those in for-profit organizations say nurses' workflows were not considered enough when the EHR purchasing decision was made.
"Technology can help nurses do their jobs more effectively or it can be a highly intrusive burden on the hospital nurse delivering patient care," said Doug Brown, managing partner of Black Book Market Research. "Many compounding nurse productivity problems of can be sourced to the failure of those selecting and implementing an EHR to involve direct care nurses in the process."
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