What is one way you could become involved in designing, selecting, evaluating, or implementing an information system in your workplace?
In my own work place I can visualize several areas that nurses would be helpful in selecting an IS. Knowing our patient culture consists of we would be able to indicate prevalent areas to implement in the design. We have customers who have diabetes, who self harm, who have particular issues with medications. These could be discussed with the nursing staff in order to implement designated areas to identify potential or actual problems. Nurses know their environment and patient needs. If the IS is not user friendly or applicable it is of little use to the staff. I worked in an outpatient office that had a system which turned out to be incredibly painstaking and convoluted. After several thousands of dollars spent the system was scrapped. It was of no use to us for our purpose.
Sounds like your ideal system would provide a link to information about various types of diseases, symptoms and medications. For example, when you have a patient with diabetes, once the diagnosis is entered, a link would take you the latest evidence-based guideline in the care of diabetes, a source that describes the pathophysiology of diabetes and a formulary to provide information about the medications your patient is taking. One stop shopping so to speak. Some enterprise systems do this through UptoDate or Zynx Health--you can learn more about each of these on the web.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to learning more about that. At this time our system is archaic. As our information describes paper charts loose a lot in translation. I've taken note of that this past week at work. Transcribing onto MARS or taking off orders become very confusing due to poor handwriting, or neglect to read the order completely. We've had a great deal of negative outcomes with our diabetic orders. It would be nice to have clear, concise, and legible documents.
ReplyDeleteThis is an excellent example of why clinician involvement is vital in the process of selection, development, design, and implementation of healthcare systems.
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