Original Research Article
Year: 2019 | Month: October | Volume: 9 | Issue: 10 | Pages: 197-203
Confident or Confused: Nurses’ Perception and Acceptability of Electronic Nursing Documentation
Sulakshana Chand1, Jyoti Sarin2
1Northside Hospital, Atlanta, GA 30071
2Dean Principal, MM College of Nursing, Mullana, Ambala. Haryana
Corresponding Author: Sulakshana Chand
ABSTRACT
Nurses for the longest time have maintained paper-based records pertaining to the rendered patient care. The past few decades, however, have witnessed the transition of nursing from a simple care to much more complex profession thus entailing accurate, complete, comprehensive and quality nursing records. To counter the potential risks of illegible, inaccurate, incomplete paper-based nursing documentation(to mention a few), electronic documentation is rapidly finding roots in the healthcare setting. Computerization is taking over as paper-based documentation is phasing out. Successful implementation of technology primarily depends on user perception and acceptance. It is thus critical to understand nurses’ perception, readiness and willingness to adapt electronic documentation. The present study explores nurses’ perception, acceptability and utility of electronic nursing documentation program using a quasi-experimental approach with pretest posttest design. Perception assessment scale and acceptability and utility opinionnaire was utilized to collect data from 44 nurses working in ICU, surgical ICU and emergency units in a rural teaching tertiary care hospital. Nurses’ perception was assessed pre and post-implementation of electronic nursing documentation program, whereas nurses’ acceptability and utility of was assessed on day 100 of implementation of program. Findings revealed a significant overall and unit wise enhancement in the perception of nurses' post-implementation of electronic nursing documentation program. A weak positive relationship was established between perception and acceptability of utility of nurses exposed to electronic nursing documentation program.
Key words: Electronic nursing documentation (END), Nursing documentation, Perception, Patient records.