Nurses Neglecting Mobile I.T.

[rnformatics]

From: http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/....cfm?DID=12410

Nurses Neglecting Mobile I.T.

(February 16, 2005) Though mobile technology has accelerated many nursing processes, it also has been the tipping point for nurses who perceive I.T. as increasing their workload, said Ann Farrell, R.N., principal and senior consultant at Farrell Associates, a San Francisco-based consulting firm.
“In automating nursing documentation, we have increased the time it takes for nurses to do it,” she contended. “However, if nurses don’t get their arms around I.T., the profession will die.”

Farrell spoke Tuesday at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Annual Conference and Exhibition. She led the “Mobile Nursing Computing Solutions: Why the Resistance to Adopt” educational session, along with Gregg Malkary, managing director at the Menlo Park, Calif.-based Spyglass Consulting Group.

Farrell said nurses have been slow to adopt mobile technology because they first want to be shown how it can save them time. Most nursing applications have been designed by engineers, so they don’t support the workflow, ergonomics and usability that most nurses need, she added. And some vendors are neglecting nurses when designing such systems, while others simply are naïve about what nurses need.

To win nurses back, health care organizations should look at how nursing automation fits the broader workflow of nursing and explain to nurses why an implementation was done, she advised. She also called on nursing leaders to look at I.T. as a way to help optimize their resources.

“We’ve been so obsessed about getting physicians on board with I.T. that we’ve lost track of nurses,” she added. “And nursing is key, for example, to a successful bar coding or computerized physician order entry implementation.”