Facilitating adoption of informatics and meaningful use of electronic health records with nursing faculty

Abstract

Objective: This educational development project focused on increasing nursing faculty adoption of informatics and nursing student use of electronic health records (EHRs) to foster meaningful use in an academic setting. The primary aims of the project were: to increase knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSA) of nursing faculty about informatics and EHRs; and to increase student use of EHRs in on-campus labs. The secondary goal was to enhance faculty adoption and pedagogical incorporation of informatics into the nursing curriculum.Methods: A one-group pre-test/post-test program evaluation design was used to survey the impact of a series of seminars and national consultants' presentations to faculty regarding their knowledge, skills, and attitudes about informatics and the use of EHRs. This project occurred over an academic year at a health science center school of nursing.Results: Pre/post matched pair means survey scores showed faculty experienced an increase in both knowledge and skills about informatics and technologies, and had slightly more favorable attitudes about EHRs and informatics at year end. Nursing student use of EHRs in the clinical laboratory also increased. Limitations to this small scale evaluation pilot were survey design and need for more intensive education with a specific informatics/EHR content-focused faculty task force.Conclusions: Nursing faculty adoption of informatics and early meaningful use of EHRs requires organizational responsiveness, faculty incentives, equipment purchases, and expert consultants to foster faculty development and student learning in state-ofthe-art on-campus labs. Replication of this program development would benefit other schools of nursing.

Digital Health in Canadian Schools of Nursing Part A: Nurse Educators’ Perspectives

“…Obstacles to effective EHR training identified in this study are consistent with those found in previous studies including: a) the variability in the functionality and quality of clinical information systems in the practice realm, b) limited and inconsistent access to ICT for both students and educators, c) a lack of clear policies to guide students' use of these systems and 4) the time and effort required by faculty to teach EHR skills (Fetter, 2008;Fetter, 2009a;Fetter, 2009b;Hern et al, 2015;Jetté et al, 2010;Mahon et al, 2010;Shin et al, 2017). Other challenges pertain to limited opportunities for partnership with clinical agencies and limited funding to alleviate installation and maintenance costs associated with integrating academic or simulated EHRs within schools of nursing (Brooks & Erikson, 2012;Fetter, 2008;Fetter, 2009b;McNeil, 2005).…”

Satisfaction of health‐care providers with electronic health records and perceived barriers to its implementation in the United Arab Emirates

“…Further, classroom teaching must be contextualized to a clinical setting to bridge the theory-practice gap in health care. 32,35,36 Faculty members must be prepared and required to incorporate the teaching of the meaningful use of EHR systems into educational programmes. Academic-practice partnerships are a suitable model to achieve requisite educational transformation.…”

“…Academic-practice partnerships are a suitable model to achieve requisite educational transformation. 32,35,36 Lack of trust in the reliability of the EHR system, another identified barrier, might be corollary to inadequate computer skills and limited knowledge of how the system works. 34 If the system's functionality and structure were assessed and improved based on users' feedback, their confidence in its reliability might improve.…”

A Quantitative Study of Nursing Faculty’s Personal and Professional Use of Technology

“…Nursing leaders perceive faculty as a barrier to curriculum integration with informatics [12]. The 2015 study by Hern, Key, Goss, and Owens concluded that nursing faculty members have an obligation to incorporate informatics into nursing curriculum [13]. This conclusion was exemplified by the 2011 survey by Hwang and Park, which demonstrated that faculty perceived their own informatics competency to be below average [14].…”