Electronic Health Records: Nursing Experiences and Implications

This essay explores nursing experiences with Electronic Health Records (EHR) and their impact on healthcare. It highlights the growing importance of health informatics and the implementation of EHR systems in modern healthcare settings, referencing the HITECH Act. The author shares their experience as a staff nurse using the Cerner system for charting, order processing, and medication reconciliation, noting its efficiency in saving time. The essay also discusses the positive impacts of EHR, such as increased time spent on direct patient care, and ethical concerns, including time-consuming data entry and potential inaccuracies. It further addresses issues like insufficient IT support and the need for user-friendly systems, while also acknowledging the benefits of easier-to-read electronic notes. The essay concludes by emphasizing the importance of training and education for nurses to effectively integrate EHR into their practice, ultimately improving healthcare outcomes.

Informatics is an interdisciplinary field that drives the innovation in the approach of
information and knowledge management (Hebda, Hunter, Czar, 2018). The following
discussion is focussed on the topic nursing experiences with EHR. Along with the expansion
of the use of Electronic Health Record (EHR), the health informatics has grown as an
involving science. Therefore, the topic is relevant as well as important in healthcare
informatics. Technology is a pervasive part of every aspect and in order to improve the
population health outcome and healthcare cost, HITECH Act strongly recommended using
health information technology in the healthcare services (Hebda, Hunter, Czar, 2018). I work
as a staff nurse on the medical unit of a hospital and informatics is associated with my current
practice system. We use Cerner as the charting system. It is helpful in daily charting,
receiving as well as processing orders, medication reconciliation and other work-related
tasks. In dynamic documentation purpose, it is used as documentation tool. This system has
saved our time and clicks.
Various literatures or scholarly articles are available in this topic that clearly
illustrates its impact on the experiences of nurses. In healthcare settings, the implementation
of Electronic Health Record system is significantly growing. With the advancement of
technology, it has come out as the necessity in healthcare. It is efficient enough in the
management of nursing records and safety of the patients. Nursing staffs are urged to
embrace the EHR system into their working practice to reduce the time required for
documentation so that they can spend more time in providing quality care to the patients. In
fact, after the implementation of EHR, it has been found in a study that nursing staffs spent
more time on direct care compared with the time spent on patient care using a paper-based
system (Munyisia, Yu & Hailey, 2014).However, there are some ethical issues associated
with the EHR as in many studies it has been analyzed that use of EHR in the clinical setting
causes time-consuming data entry, degradation of clinical documentation and others

(Balestra, 2017). Another study also produced the result that nurses are devoting more time to
data entry instead of spending time in patient contact. In the EHR setting, a big amount of
data can be outdated or inaccurate. Use of EHR may also increase the legal responsibilities
and accountabilities of the nurses or other healthcare professionals as well. Nurses also felt
insufficient human power backup and IT support while working with EHR system in their
workplace and if a technical problem occurs then resolving the issue is quite time consuming
(Balestra, 2017). Nurses also expressed their opinions that EHR is not always user-friendly
and it requires computer knowledge to handle. However, many positive sides of EHR have
also been accepted by then nurses that electronic-notes are easier to read than the handwritten
notes. Transitioning to EHR requires careful consideration and if training can be organized by
the authority of the healthcare organization to educate nurses about EHR, it could be more
helpful. Finally, it can be concluded that with the growing of technology healthcare settings is
also changing and EHR can be one of the most effective integrations. Nurses should have
learning experiences with IT to encounter in the clinical environment (Hebda, Hunter, Czar,
2018). Therefore, a little education will be more helpful for the nurses in acquiring the
technology into the working practice.

References
Balestra, M. L. (2017). Electronic health records: patient care and ethical and legal
implications for nurse practitioners. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners, 13(2), 105-
111. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nurpra.2016.09.010
Hebda, T.L., Hunter, K., Czar, P. (2018). Handbook of Informatics for Nurses & Healthcare
Professionals (6th Edition) 6th Edition. Retrieved from
https://www.vitalsource.com/products/handbook-of-informatics-for-nurses-amp-
healthcare-toni-l-hebda-v9780134748436
Munyisia, E., Yu, P., & Hailey, D. (2014). The effect of an electronic health record system on
nursing staff time in a nursing home: a longitudinal cohort study. The Australasian
medical journal, 7(7), 285. Doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.4066%2FAMJ.2014.2072