e-Health: an emerging arena in the connection of public health, clinical informatics, and business

Running head: REFLECTION
ASSESSMENT ONE: Written Assignment
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
e-health has been identified as an emerging arena in the connexion of public health,
clinical informatics, and business, and refers to the health information and services delivered
or improved through the usage of Internet and associated technologies (Ross, Stevenson, Lau
& Murray, 2016). It encompasses a way of thinking and state of mind for the improvement of
health care, with the usage of communication and information technology. Digital health
records, commonly known as electronic health records (EHR) are digital versions of paper-
based patient charts and facilitate instant and secure availability of patient information to
authorised users (Rajkomar et al., 2018). This reflection will elucidate my responsibilities in
recording and assessing clinical care outcomes in such digitalised health setting and also
focus on the necessity to adopt e-health.
Personal and Professional self-reflection
I believe that as new RNs, we have to constantly encounter countless challenges that
create an impact on successful transition to our practice. The healthcare environment is ever-
changing, nonetheless the demand for nursing professionals remains unchanged and the
requirement is more severe than before (Aberese-Ako, Agyepong & van Dijk, 2018). My
experience has helped me comprehend that hospitals are always under added pressure of
operating in an efficient and lean manner, owing to increased consumerism, increased patient
admissions and staff shortage. As a graduate nurse, my primary responsibility in a digitalised
health setting is to effectively use electronic health records (EHRs), predominantly
Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE), with the aim of decreasing rates of errors and
enhancing patient safety. The common challenges that are encountered following transition to
practice are namely, an increase in the number of patients suffering from multifaceted
conditions and numerous comorbidities, generational variety in the staff, non-existence of
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access to knowledgeable mentors and trainers, performance anxiety, and intimidation (Black,
2016).
To further worsen the scenario, workload and staff shortage result in errors in care
delivery, thus threatening the health and safety of patients. Not only are the RNs expected to
help patients gain access to personal health information, but also have the duty of decreasing
duplicate testing and saving time devoted to each patient, thus enhancing patient care
decisions (Bodenheimer & Mason, 2016). During transition to nursing practice, adoption of
digital health will not only prove beneficial to us nurses by providing us the occasion to
enhance patient lifestyle and maintain an optimal health, but will also help us in decreasing
healthcare costs and customise the care as per the requirements and demands of patients
(Mather & Cummings, 2019). The World Health Organisation proposes that e-health
encompasses the usage of digital technology for treating patients, conducting nursing
research, education, monitoring public health, and keeping a track on disease (WHO, 2020).
Considering the challenges that we have to encounter in practice, there often occurs
errors during care that commonly involve wrong dose, wrong route of drug administration or
incorrect drug preparation. Such incidents add to moral distress of nursing professionals, thus
forcing them to leave the practice. This calls for the need of utilising CPOE, the leading
feature of EHR, where the medical orders are electronically entered in a computer system,
with the aim of decreasing error rates, in comparison to paper-based patient records, and
enhancing effective communication with physicians, which in turn will allow complete
access to medical history of patients and facilitate keeping a track on patient health status
(Almond, Cummings & Turner, 2017). Therefore, as a graduate nurse, it is imperative to
record and document patient information and medication orders in computerised system, in
order to enhance patient outcomes, and increase job satisfaction.
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Evaluation
I believe that novel digital health technologies have the prospect of increasing care
efficiency, improving patient safety, and resulting in healthier outcomes. This is confirmed
by the fact that the fast pace of transformation in the digital world has made all domains
reconsider how to approach work, and the nursing profession is no exception (Gopal, Suter-
Crazzolara, Toldo & Eberhardt, 2019). My clinical expertise has helped me realise that
medical records are an assortment of clinical diagnostic notes and patient information that are
self-reported, conventionally stored on paper-based medium. Time and again it has been
found that paper-based records are easier to customise according to the health status and
requirements of each patient, without making any adjustments to any software (Foster et al.,
2018). However, I gained a sound understanding of the fact that paper-based medical records
need adequate physical space for their storage. I hold the notion that paper-based medical
records of patients once lost can never be retrieved or are difficult to recover.
However, digital health records such as CPOE involve communication of orders over
a computerised network across different departments like radiology, pharmacy, and
laboratory that decreases the time required for disseminating and completing the orders,
besides improving the efficacy by decreasing rates of errors (Were, Sinha & Catalani, 2019).
Our world has been drastically changed by digital technology such as, tablets, smart phones,
and web-enabled devices that have changed our day-to-day lives and the manner in which we
connect. Often I have encountered situations where lack of clear patient information or
transcription errors have resulted in duplicate order entries, thus adding to the time, billing
costs and other expenditure. According to Graboyes and Bryan (2018) more exhaustive and
complete information of medical history and ongoing care of patients available from digital
health records will enable physicians and nursing professionals to make care decisions, such
that there are no safety risks for the patients. It has been identified that e-health will not only
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