Will EHRs Improve Patient Safety?
Patient safety is of
the utmost importance to nurses. They
are the front-line workers, they continuously use the Electronic Health Record
(EHR), spend the most time with patients at the bedside. Nurses really on Health
data and information provided by EHR
According to Health Information Technology”
EHRs and the ability to exchange health information electronically provide
higher quality and safer care for patients and help providers better manage
care for patients and provide better health care” (What are the advantages.
2018). The EHR “providing up to date
complete information about the patient, quick access to a patient record, safer
care, secure sharing of electronic information with the patient and other healthcare
workers, and help reduce costs through
decreased paperwork, improved safety, reduced duplication of testing, and
improved health “(What are the advantages. 2018). However, according to video
EHR not always helping improve patient care. Schencker based article “EHR
safety goes to court “from 2016 on the suspected accidents occurred, a hospital
system. The information included in
article pointed out that due to errors
“One patient's blood pressure fallen dangerously after he was apparently
discharged with the wrong medications, in another case, a physician couldn't
place a pharmacy order for a newborn to receive vitamin K, which is given to
babies to prevent serious bleeding and in another’s examples patients weren't
accurately tracked, creating potential problems getting drugs to them”
(Schencker, 2016). When physicians are unable to place an order for
observation, or inpatient status in the computer nurses case managers can fix
it or document the error. When the nurse case manager sends wrong information
to the insurance company about the patients, she can correct the system and
resend correct data to obtain the right status or payment for patient’s stay in
hospital. However, if nurse taking care of patients administer wrong medication
to the patient, she may cause irreversible effects on the patient's health or
even death. According to Schencker, (2016)
the PinnacleHealth blamed the electronic health records system (Schencker,
2016). The article also pointed out that “lawsuits involving patient safety and
EHRs have been handled as malpractice cases, where it can be difficult to get a
handle on exactly who has been named or the nature of the alleged EHR errors
“(Schencker, 2016). According the data
from all cases presented to court
“64%, involved user errors, 42% involved issues with the EHR system
itself, 10% involved a failure of system design, 9% involved electronic systems
or technology failure and 7% were due to
a lack of an EHR alert or alarm for things like glaring gender-specific entry
errors" (Schencker, 2016). One of the examples was a case of "an elderly woman
who was prescribed Flomax, a drug for treating an enlarged prostate, instead of
Flonase, a nasal spray" (Schencker, 2016). Those examples are only a drop in the sea of
mistakes and shortcomings of the system. Nurses are an important key in the
nursing future. With their experience, knowledge can improve EHR system and
provide the safer, high quality care for patients. The technology irreversibly change people's lives. Nurses often open an electronic chart of patients not assigned to them,
because they help physicians to place the orders in the computer, print
information for families, access information for coworkers. Nurses sometimes forget
that the new technology and internet went through many changes, that each time
they access the patient’s files they leave the electronic fingerprint with
their user name, date and time.
A solution or series
of steps to be taken to improve the issues.
Advance
practice informatics nurses are responsible for convincing others that a change
is needed to increase patient’s safety and quality of patients care. Who, if
not Advanced Practice Informatics Nurse know that safe, high quality patient care
of current health care relies on the collected data. Importance of the right
system used in healthcare is dictated by the importance of data collected about
the procedures, delays, errors or highlights of patient care. Health data are helpful
during the development of new policies, and guidelines
(The IMIA Code of Ethics 2016). Advance practice nurses should focus on
promoting coordination, interoperability and data exchange.
Recommendations for
improvement
Advance Practice Nurses should communicate among the
healthcare workers as well as the information specialist’s “necessity to
consider the principles of medical ethics, set up, in the modern era by
Beauchamps and Childress “(Aluas, 2016). Four principles like” autonomy which supports people
freedom, independence of thought and action, beneficence promote to do good and
welfare, non-maleficence obligate people to do no harm, and justice makes
people act fairly , balancing rights and interests of patients ” (Aluas, 2016).
Even though existing technology is not perfect, currently is no need for a
drastic change of systems. Advance
practice nurse should accept the human errors and moving forward with new data
start planning, implement and evaluate the new project based on collected data
and assurance.
References
Aluas, M. (2016). Ethical and Legal Considerations of
Healthcare Informatics. Applied Medical Informatics, 38(3), 91–98. Retrieved
from https://search-ebscohost-com.ju.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=120576147&site=ehost-live
Schencker,
L. (2016, June). EHR safety goes to court. Retrieved from https://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20160625/MAGAZINE/306259982/ehr-safety-goes-to-court
Pew. (2018, February 05).
Retrieved April 24, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlQ60KaLeHg
Tnmed. (2012, May 10).
Retrieved April 24, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgIqWpNK5fo
The
IMIA Code of Ethics for Health Information Professionals. (2016). Retrieved
from https://imia-medinfo.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/IMIA-Code-of-Ethics-2016.pdf
What are the advantages of
electronic health records? (2018, November). Retrieved from
https://www.healthit.gov/faq/what-are-advantages-electronic-health-records
