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Capella University

NURS-FPX6422 Clinical Information Systems and Application to Nursing Practice Analysis

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Submission Date

Making Decisions to Use Informatics Systems in Practice

Notably, informatics measures such as electronic health record (EHR) systems have helped transform the delivery of healthcare, making it more efficient, effective and, consequently, high-quality in the process of clinical decision making. It also has critical functions in implementing evidence based practice as it would be available to the patient not only at the time of the intervention but also allow for coordination of a patient’s care by health care workers. The question of the best way to incorporate the EHRs into the arena of hospice care, in which an interdisciplinary team would be central to the patient receiving the best of all care, was one of the most important issues. The latter, though, are exacerbated by technological (e.g., bad working processes, or other connectivity problems). Then, discussing the use of EHR and developing positive policies that will result in the highest quality and outcome rates in care are the most important.

Evaluation of the Informatics Tool in Supporting Evidence-Based Practice

The most important one would be an electronic health record system (EHR) which would lead to an evidence-based practice (EBP). It can be a combination of the aforementioned issues, clinical information, patient history and evidence-based recommendations all presented on one platform, easily accessible. They would supply with real-time records and offer an intimate access to information. This can in turn help to empower the caregiver(s) and to guide clinical decision making. The standardized care protocol, clinical guidelines, would be one of the case studies that would use EHRs. This has made sure that if a treatment decision is made it is consistent with one of the treatment guidelines agreed on, which are based on the evidence.

Both these are due to the fact that clinical decision making process would be “aware” with EHR. Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) are one of the features of these. If it’s present, it will trigger an alarm, a reminder and suggestions will be displayed. They make sure that the provider knows about it, be it drug interaction, allergy or many more (Muzaffar et al, 2023). This may be something that could be adapted towards solving the challenge of patient safety. EHRs could also offer a lot of assistance in the venture itself of removing the information fragmentation. They aggregate patient info from multiple data sources, and provide them with a single interface to potentially infinite data sources in one system. It will also be a contribution towards inter / intra-disciplinary communications and the overall care.

There are a number of drawbacks to this approach, but it’s certainly preferable to the advantages mentioned above for an EHR system. Factors in this include alert fatigue, the complexity of the UI and documentation, which could also have an effect on the usability. Such types of problems might also lead to the clinician’s burnout. Can also be problematic, causing technical issues, such as system malfunction, or even unavailability. A couple of these leak in the hospice care setting. The problems outlined above could cause the patients to be denied access to the valuable information about them when they are required to do so. All these failures can be attributed to the fact that there is no system test, which will have to be executed periodically. They will also have to determine if the policy is worthwhile or not – and it is they who are publicly explaining. These policies should be focused on the enhancements made with EHR that will maximize the use of that to select the “best apple” as determined by evidence-based practice.

Analysis of the Work Setting Using Evidence-Based Practice

Care in the hospice setting is an exceedingly special setting in which evidence-based practice needs to be woven in with the provision of patient-based care. The use of interprofessional working in care teams to discuss complex patients and needs, how symptoms can be managed, how they can support patients emotionally, and what they can do to plan end-of-life care for their patients is an important element of the setting. With EHR, it’s essential to be able to work in teams and collaborate. They can enable healthcare providers to have access to patient data and information on patient desires in one location. Hospice EHRs can be an advantageous tool for using evidence-based practice. They might allow current patients’ information and treatment suggestions to doctors and nurses. For instance, if the patient complains of a symptom, the nurse can input the symptom in the EHR, the patient’s status change, and the patient’s preferred treatment, and the patient can record. Additionally, the EHR data can be utilized to ensure proper medication adherence and reduce prescription drug interactions. Provide information to all staff of care; this will allow coordinated care/ quality of care. However, in some cases, the benefits of the EHRs will be lowered. Employed non-healthcare workers (such as visitors & residents not in healthcare systems) are not healthcare workers. Many other barriers have the same impact as described above with regard to decision-making and delays in care. There is a relationship between knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the EHR systems and the work environment. This can serve as a resource for health care practitioners’ guidance on the application of EBP to their clinical practice.

Strategic Alignment with Organizational Goals  

Implementation and optimization of electronic health record (EHR) systems go hand in hand and are two processes that cannot be separated without a strategy for health organizations. They will be more likely to work towards improving the quality of care delivery, streamlining the work of operations (and the other way around), and making them follow the rules. They even go as far as to test EHRs to make their decision based on the data, only because it might turn out that they would end up having large amounts of data on a patient. We would also be able to do an analysis on them, depending on their help in the clinical outcomes analysis. This will aid the organizations in creating trends, performance analysis, and quality improvement programs. In a move that would put them in a position to benefit the patient by offering them direct patient care benefits in their care facilities, they have been urging them to visit their care facilities so that they can initiate them on how to implement EHR systems in their care facilities. After the areas of control – where EHR would have attained perfection – would then be perfected within the boundaries of due and proper custodianship of the patients. This could be deemed as a benefit to the organizations not only in terms of being law-abiding, but also in terms of categorization into the accreditation. To do it in a way that would have put any one man in a better position to retain his/her economic status would, however, be more appropriate. They spoil an otherwise commendable record of services, decrease the number of errors when writing, and foster high invoicing. The other way would be to utilize our strategic planning with data analytics using our EHRs.

Workflow Efficiency and Patient Safety  

While there are many advantages of the EHR system, two significant ones are better workflow and enhanced patient safety. With EHRs, health care providers can accomplish more, faster, and better. These, too, can help them boost their productivity as well as their ability to manage their employees’ payroll and benefits. It will also make it easy for the medical practitioners involved to access and update medical records, communicate with the other team members to reduce downtime in healthcare, and coordinate with the team members in a timely manner. It can be installed during its turn, so that its users (the patients) become accustomed to the use of these EHRs, and automatically receive warnings and follow pre-coordinated templates and clinical decision support systems (CDSSs), which in turn can be installed to prevent medical error. But anything that gets in the way, such as a bad interface, over-documented systems, and tech crashes, can undo the effectiveness and, in this instance, make hospice homes ineffective. However, these challenges can be addressed by the redesign of care delivery systems as well as ensuring their policies are clearly and easily understood, so that they are safer and more effective to administer.

Interprofessional Care and Patient Satisfaction     

To ensure that the provision of interprofessional care is undertaken, and patients are satisfied with it. Through the electronic health record (EHR) system, the interprofessional care will further develop skills in communication and collaboration between the various health service providers involved in interprofessional care. The hospice environment will need to be a ‘team’ environment where the group comprising nurses, doctors, pharmacists, and other human resources will be required to work as a team to achieve all the tasks in the hospice environment. It means that EHR will ease their delivery and reporting on the relevant details, which results in having the patients on the same bandwagon as EHR. This will ensure everyone in the team is aware of the conditions of the patients, the treatment plan, and the patients’ goals of care. This coordination, in its turn, also receives upgrading, and the probability of any errors being generated by it also reaches the lowest possible level. Another benefit would be that the patient’s preferences and care plans would be recorded in an EHR system in a straightforward, comprehensible manner, which would help to standardize and improve patient-centric care. When combined with patient satisfaction and more communication tools/instruments between health practitioners, the positive influence of such an increase in tools/instruments will only come to light once patient satisfaction is on the table. The providers will also be involved in the right information, which they will update, thereby providing the services in time and regularly. It’s an escalation of the whole process undergone by a patient on his own. Hospice care requires enormous care and individualised care in order to be empathetic. The EHR systems will also contribute to the creation of such requirements since they will guarantee that there is adequate documentation and coordination. Not only would they reduce the number of administrations the provider would have to give, but the provider could also spend more time with the patients. The resultant increase in the level of minimum trust will also increase with a corresponding increase in satisfaction due to this good communication. Collaboration and thereby good patient outcomes may be the only thing that the overdependence on EHR systems could lead to.

Need for Policy and Guidelines

These guidelines can address significant problems of appropriate documentation practices, the use of clinical decision support tools, and compliance with data security issues. Support for the evidence-based practice, reprocessing the EHR systems to be more efficient, and creating a sense of collaboration and responsibility could be achieved using the policy and guidelines.

Conclusion

Both the hand-in-hand evidence-based practice and the electronic health record (EHR) systems will undoubtedly lead to an increase in the number of better and more efficient patient care results. They improve the functioning of the group and care for the patient in the patient-based hospice. But the obstacles, including the inefficiency in the process, technology problems, etc., should be resolved. Their application can even be streamlined as the mission of the organizations can tie up their practices with EHR application, and a series of well-crafted policies can be established to govern the use of EHR. The level of quality of care and satisfaction of the patients will then have a healthy impact as a new constant improvement gets implemented.