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Group 9
Lizbeth Juarez
Esmeralda Carlos
Anthony Gonzalez
Amri Leyva
Itzy Dorado
EHR and the Quality of Nursing
The health care system is adapting and adopting many technological advancements to
improve patient overall health outcomes. Technological health advancements make way to
research and treat past, present, and future disease. Over the years it has become imperative to
have a well structure system to collect increasingly patient information. One of the solutions was
the inventions of electronics health record systems, which use an electronic digital platform to
store, categorized, and organize vast and complex data for entire hospital systems at times.
Electronic health record systems (EHRSs) have brought numerous quality improvement benefits
for health care and nursing in general. The four main benefits with the implementation of
electronic health record systems are improved data integrity, increased productivity, improved
quality of care, and increased satisfaction for health caregivers (Hebda et al., 2019).
Improved data integrity refers to the storage and management of vital patient information.
EHRSs categorized and organized patient information accurately in a far superior manner than a
physical paper form. EHRSs increase productibility, in which nurses can have instant access to
patient information on multiple locations throughout the hospital system. As a result, vital signs,
laboratory values, clinical notes, and pertinent patient information is documented and uploaded
instantly when complete, improving patient’s health outcomes with timely appropriate health care
decisions and minimizing delay of patient care. Improved quality of care has been achieved
through trend association more specifically with medications being given (Guo et al., 2021) For
example, furosemide may be given for exacerbation of congestive heart failure, from the time the
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medication was given and documented, nurses can track and monitor patient’s response to the
medication, including urinary output and even renal function, giving the nurse and providers trends
to keep monitoring or even possible changes in plan of care. Hebda (2019) stated EHRSs have
increased satisfaction for nurses with numerous advantages like easy access to patient data, along
with drug information sources, rules-based decision support, and literature searches.
One potential concern that EHRSs bring into nursing care is system failure and loss of data,
leaving the nurse incapable of accessing patient vital information. “Hardware and software
malfunctions, such as system crash, may result incomplete or lost data (Hebda et al., 2019, p. 127).
Without this critical information the nurse and hospital will inevitably change to paper charting
unitl the system is serviced and is back and running. These scenarios can leave the door open to
medication errors with allergies or interactions that can ultimately harm the patient.
Addressing the concern of system failure, would have to be nurse driven. Workshops
dedicated to overcoming the barriers of not only limited information, but increased risk for error.
These workshops would be based on paper charting, and a backup charts that maybe disturbed by
the technology support department and administration. Being prepared and having scenario
workshops would help address some concern regarding the EHRSs software or hardware fail.
Overall EHRSs are a vital part of the success in better health outcomes. They have become
intergrade and cemented in the foundation of our current health care system. EHRSs are constantly
evolving and continue to be the system of choice over paper charting.
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References
Guo, A., Khan, Y. M., Langabeer, J. R., & Foraker, R. E. (2021). Discovering disease–disease
associations using electronic health records in the guideline advantage (TGA) dataset.
Scientific Reports, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-00345-z
Hebda, T., Hunter, K. M., & Czar, P. (2019). Handbook of Informatics for Nurses and Health Care
Professionals. Pearson.