NURS 8210 Week 6 HIT Usability and Design Challenges

NURS 8210 Week 6 HIT Usability and Design Challenges

By Day 3 post a cohesive response to the following:

• Place yourself in the role of the clinical administrator tasked with implementing the case study’s new health information technology system.
• • Evaluate the usability challenges that you faced during implementation as well as the factors that caused these challenges.
  • Determine whether these challenges were a result of implementation or design.
  • Formulate strategies for overcoming these usability challenges.

Read a selection of your colleagues’ postings.

The development of HIT has brought with it several problems the IT has to deal with daily. An organization needs to put together the right team for a HIT system implementation to be successful. Health information systems (HIS) can present unique requirements that can be somewhat problematic during implementation. It is almost inevitable that a system would require constant design and redesign in problem areas during its lifetime (Schlotzer & Madsen, 2010).

The usability of EHR remains a priority and has emerged as an informatics topic of national interest. After years of development of IT in healthcare, clinicians have finally concluded that it does not provi

de the kind of cognitive and workflow support they need (Staggers, N. (2010). One of the main problems is accessing information created by many professionals using different settings that may not interact. Usability is supposed to bridge the gap between people and machines, thus promising to assist in completing tasks within shorter times with minimum effort. In nursing, usability eliminates errors such as bar-coded medication administration and leads to patient satisfaction as it allows nurses to spend more time with their patients (Koppel & Kuziemsky, 2019).

Researchers often report that EHR was increasing the amount of time that nurses spend with their patients. Changes were made to the system at one organization, and now users had to input passwords with each template that they opened, which was rather time-consuming. For example, when documenting on a single patient, one would need to input a password to access the medication administration, another password to access the patient assessment templet, flow sheet for input & output, skin assessment, etc. from a nursing point of view, I would rather have one password to access the computer system then another one to access the patient record. Once in a single patient domain, the users should click and open templates without a hitch. Better still, all assessments should be on one template. I questioned this and was informed that other departments, such as Quality Improvement, wanted the templates singled out to make their work easier.

The implementation of clinical information systems (CISs) denotes a new era of technological possibilities. It is always essential to include nursing in the implementation states of any HIT systems, as not doing so may make them unprepared to use the technology in performing their work. Nurses need to be educated on using the system, and their level of computer skills needs to be enhanced in readiness to adopt the new changes. This could result in a significant delay between creating the new healthcare enterprise and the end user’s ability to fulfill its potential (Gruber et al., 2019).

 

References

Gruber, D., Cummings, G., Leblanc, L. & Smith, D. (2009). Factors Influencing Outcomes of Clinical Information Systems Implementation. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 27 (3), 151-163. doi: 10.1097/NCN.0b013e31819f7c07.

Koppel, R., & Kuziemsky, C. (2019). Usability Across Health Information Technology Systems: Searching for Commonalities and Consistency. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 264, 649–653. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.3233/SHTI190303

Schlotzer, A., & Madsen, M. (2010). Health information systems: requirements and characteristics. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 151, 156–166.

Staggers, N. (2010). The rapidly emerging national interest in HIT usability. Online Journal of Nursing Informatics, 14(3), 4p.

Usability in HIT refers to the success, efficiency, and satisfaction with which specific users can attain a particular set of tasks in a specific environment. However, poor usability results in errors and challenges, which are attributed to patient harm (Ratwani et al., 2019). Usability challenges that I encountered as a clinical administrator during the implementation of the EMR in the medical center include a complicated user interface (Ball et al., 2011). There was also inadequate online assistance to help the clinicians and a poorly designed command menu that could not account for the use of short-cut keys for experienced end-users.

The complicated user interface was caused by the system developers failing to consider the design specifications provided by the end-users. Besides, the inadequate use of online assistance by clinicians was due to a lack of comprehensive training on the use of online tools present in the HIT system (Ratwani et al., 2019). The poorly designed command menu was due to the developers failing to predict the potential challenge when designing the EMR system. The challenges were a result of both poor design and implementation. Issues in the system design include the complicated user interface and poorly designed command menu (Ratwani et al., 2019). These could have been identified and prevented during the system development and testing phases.  On the other hand, the ineffective use of online assistance was an implementation issue, which could have been addressed at the early stage by conducting staff training.

The challenges can be addressed by involving end-users, clinicians and nurses, at the initial stages of designing and developing the EMR system. The end users can provide insight on how the system should be designed to meet the priority needs in health care delivery (Russ & Saleem, 2018). Staff training is also crucial and should be conducted in the initial stages of implementation (Russ & Saleem, 2018). It ensures that the staff have the necessary knowledge and skills to implement the system and solve common technical challenges.

References

Ball, M. J., DuLong, D., & Hannah, K. J. (2011). Nursing informatics: where technology and caring meet.

Ratwani, R. M., Reider, J., & Singh, H. (2019). A decade of health information technology usability challenges and the path forward. Jama, 321(8), 743-744. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2019.0161

Russ, A. L., & Saleem, J. J. (2018). Ten factors to consider when developing usability scenarios and tasks for health information technology. Journal of biomedical informatics, 78, 123-133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2018.01.001

 

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Important information for writing discussion questions and participation

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Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to

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Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week.

I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!

Hi Class,

Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts.

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Important information on Writing a Discussion Question

• Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references)
• There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article.
• Include in-text citations in your response
• Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information
• Follow APA-7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed

Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor

• A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week.
• Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article
• Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references)
• Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count.
• Follow APA 7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed
• Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points.
• Here are some helpful links
• Student paper example
• Citing Sources
• The Writing Center is a great resource