Role of Nurses in the Adoption of EHR

Electronic Health Record System

Technology holds a lot of great potential in hospital operations. Nurses have a chance to serve their patients better and carry out other special operations at the hospital by utilizing technology. Electronic Health Record (EHR) system is the latest technology that is used to record and monitor all the hospital records. For the technology to be considered appropriate, a number of factors have to be considered. The following discussion identifies and gives a rationale for the factors considered.

The five qualities of a good EHR system

One quality of the useful technology is the relative advantage of the technology. Here, the adopted technology should be better off than the one already in existence. It will be wise to have a system that serves the role in a better way than the one in place. Secondly, the new system to be adopted is that there should be compatibility with the work. It is important that compatibility be assured so that workers are not going to face any difficulty. The new system should also be simple to use (Bates, 2010). Any challenge will attract resistance from the nurses. Trialability is another quality of a new technology to be adopted. It should be possible to try it before use. Lastly, the adopted system needs to yield observable results that can be measured. This is important in appraising whether the new system to ascertain whether it is worth the implementation (Fickenscher & Bakerman, 2011).

Conducting a meeting with nurses

Before the implementation of a new electronic health record system in the hospital, the nurses have to be taken through an interactive session in a meeting. The aim of this meeting will be to establish a point of contact with them as well as seek their views regarding the application of this system. It is also important to hold this meeting with the aim of establishing better contacts with them and perhaps get to know what they want in the new system Gruber, Darragh, Puccia, Kadric & Bruce, 2010).

In the consultative meeting, the nurses will be asked to state the strengths, and the weaknesses of the existing system and they have been using for long. This will assist the management to learn the gap in that the system has and need to be filled. The meeting will also help the nurses to air their concerns and present their suggestions regarding the kind of technology that they wanted fixed in place. Secondly, the meeting will also give the nurses to get a glimpse of the new system that is about to be introduced to them. From this, it will be possible to assess the way the newly proposed system is much better or worse off than the existing one (Hyrkas & Harvey, 2010). Managers need to be well versed with the new system so that they can introduce it well to the nurses. This demonstrates the need to have the new system testable. Otherwise, it will not be possible to assess it viability while at the meeting. The nurses also have a unique role to determine the viability of the new system through the establishment of compatibility tests.

The meetings with the nurses will also open doors for them to communicate their fears regarding the adoption of the new system. This will happen since they will all be pooled together and will have an interactive session with the authorities. This chance opens room for the constructive talk that will spell out what is supposed to done to fix and existing problem or at worse conduct an overhaul of the completely failed system. Once such a consultative meeting is done, the employees will have no other option but to support the management, hence reducing resistance (Fickenscher & Bakerman, 2011).

Responding to resistance from nurses

It is possible that after the new system has been introduced, the employees will stage some resistance to it. Such kind of resistance can be in protests of the hardship occasioned by the new system, which could be real or perceived. The new system can also attract opposition if it fails to meet the expectations of the nurses as had been expected after the simulation tests done at the meeting. As a preventive measure, it is necessary to have an exhaustive meeting with the nurses. However, if resistance still prevails, the management has to adopt good diplomacy in the way they approach the nurses. One way will be to ask the nurses to present their suggested solutions to the problem. Asking them to do so will make them involved in the solution process. This will make them be part of the process and will stop seeing managers as thou they are to blame. They will too feel the impact of the implementation challenge. In some instances, this helps in arriving at the appropriate solutions that would require the effort of managers. As the ones who use the system on a daily basis, they will understand and identify the solutions of to the mishaps (Gruber, Darragh, Puccia, Kadric & Bruce, 2010).

Another way of responding to resistance is by using force and coercion on the nurses. When the management is convinced that the newly proposed and instituted technology system will yield positive results, they can use some force so that employees can accept its adoption. At times, nurses can simply refuse to use the new technology on flimsy excuses. Since management calls the last shots in the hospital, the nurses will automatically submit to any assertive approach exercised by them (Hyrkas & Harvey, 2010).

Role of nurses as change agents