Taking the pulse of healthcare IT.

As providers of frontline medical care, nurses across the healthcare spectrum are in unique position to offer critical feedback about the use of information technology (IT) in the clinical setting. This feedback can help healthcare organizations of all types, including long-term care facilities, streamline processes and technology implementations with an eye toward improving resident outcomes.

With significant investments in time and capital--not to mention the delivery of quality care--at stake, integrating nurses' expertise and insight into enterprisewide deployments can mean the difference between an IT success story and a costly failure.

To gain a strong understanding of this important population's attitudes toward IT, CDW Healthcare recently conducted an online survey of more than 500 nurses. The study, rifled Nurses Talk Tech[TM], revealed that nurses overwhelmingly validate the potential of IT to improve patient care but cite significant challenges to realizing its full capabilities.

A VOTE OF CONFIDENCE FOR IT

In the survey, 86% of respondents indicated that IT has the potential to improve the quality of patient care. Participating nurses cited technology's ability to streamline access to patient information, improve operational efficiency, and reduce the potential for diagnostic or prescription errors as being among its most valuable benefits.

Nurses are putting their support of healthcare technology into practice--44% of survey respondents claimed they spend three or more hours a day using IT for various applications. When asked for which tasks they use IT, 69% of nurses reported using e-mail regularly; 60% use IT to document in electronic health records (EHR); and half of all respondents use it to order patient tests and prescriptions through computerized physician order entry (CPOE).

Nearly 90% of respondents access critical programs from desktop systems, while 21% use notebooks. Newer computing platforms, including handheld and tablet PCs, are less widely adopted--only 9% of participating nurses claimed they used a handheld device and three percent used a tablet PC.

With a shortage of experienced nurses persists in some regions and healthcare settings, the ability of organizations to attract and retain qualified nursing staff has become profoundly important. Nurses clearly attach value to healthcare organizations' use of technology when considering a place of employment. Sixty-four percent of survey participants indicated that IT is an important consideration when they decided where to work, and 26% responded that they would not consider working in a healthcare organization without it.

Given these findings, it appears that employers seeking to recruit nursing talent, in long-term care or anywhere else, can gain an edge over their competitors by making their organizations more tech-savvy, thus drawing in an increasingly IT-literate workforce.

MOVING FORWARD INTO AN IT FUTURE

The large number of respondents claiming to use technology on a daily basis combined with the relatively complex applications that they utilize (e.g., EHR and CPOE platforms) suggests an increase in both the depth and scope of IT use in the clinical setting.

Although newer platforms, notably handheld and tablet PCs, are not yet widely employed, increased customization of this hardware for healthcare-specific environments coupled with a gradual reduction in per-unit cost will likely lead to their proliferation among provider organizations over the next three to five years.

However, barriers still exist that prevent healthcare organizations from reaping the full rewards of their IT rollouts. Healthcare facilities can encourage greater adoption of and success with IT by providing regular and effective on-site training for end users, as well as incorporating nursing staff input and feedback from the beginning of an initiative through implementation. Healthcare administrators committed to securing the buy-in of nursing personnel should consider establishing a nursing informatics post to open lines of communication between care providers and the IT department.

Nursing homes and other healthcare organizations looking to encourage adoption and enhance the effectiveness of IT utilization must carefully consider a variety of issues when making technology choices. But while they debate cost and content of their IT rollouts, they should never fail to include care providers, such as nurses, in the decision-making process to ensure they get the greatest value for their technology dollars.

RELATED ARTICLE: Hurdles remain for IT.

Nurses clearly see the value of information technology (IT) as a means to help improve efficiency and patient care. However, nursing homes and other healthcare organizations still face significant hurdles to realizing the full potential of their IT investment.

Nurses cite poor integration/interoperability, regular system failures, and limited access to information and applications as among the most frustrating elements of using IT on the job.

Respondents to the survey also indicated a need for more IT training. When asked what would have the greatest impact on improving how they use IT in their job, 55% of participants responded that more professional instruction or professional development would help.

Despite the nursing community's widespread interest in IT training, healthcare organizations do not appear to invest heavily in this function. Nearly 30% of survey respondents received no IT instruction whatsoever in the past year, and 56% received between one and eight hours, most often delivered by a member of the facility's inhouse IT team. Interestingly, respondents who received eight or fewer hours of training were more likely to indicate they do not have time to use IT than respondents who received more extensive instruction.

Although nurses are more often consulted in the IT selection/implementation process than physicians, the overwhelming majority are still likely to be excluded from these decisions. Thirty-six percent of survey respondents indicated that nurse managers and staff nurses are involved in the selection/implementation process, compared to 14 percent who indicated physicians are consulted.

Another interesting response came from organizations that do not involve nurses in the IT selection/implementation process. Those nurses were more than twice as likely to state that IT diminishes or does not improve the quality of care than nurses in facilities that seek their opinions.

--Bob Rossi

Bob Rossi joined CDW Healthcare in 1994 focused on furthering CDW' s penetration into the commercial IT space. After four years of contributing to the successful growth of CDW's profile in the private sector, Rossi was named as the first director of federal sales for CDW Government, CDW Corporation's public sector subsidiary. In July 2005, Rossi took his current position to lead CDW's efforts to execute the strategy for the company's Healthcare Division, which serves as a leading provider of technology products and services focused exclusively on healthcare organizations.