NURS FPX 8012 Assessment 1 Technology Informatics Use in Your Practice Setting Technology-Informatics Use in Your Practice Setting

Hello, my name is Ariel, and today I will be talking about the use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in Allen Hospital, Waterloo (Khubone et al., 2020). I have worked in this hospital facility as an emergency nurse for almost 6 months. EHR has been rising in healthcare in recent years as healthcare providers aim to improve patient care, reduce errors, and enhance efficiency (Atasoy et al., 2019). EHRs are digital versions of patient health information that include patient demographics, medical history, diagnoses, medications, treatment plans, immunization dates, allergies, radiology images, and laboratory and test results. EHRs can be either cloud-based or locally hosted. EHR can aid healthcare providers in making well-informed patient care decisions and improving care coordination across various healthcare settings (Atasoy et al., 2019).

This assessment will delve into the advantages and challenges of implementing EHRs in Allen hospital and the best practices to ensure that EHRs are utilized effectively to support high-quality patient care.

Analysis of Benefits of EHR

Background

Allen hospital specializes in emergency medicine, providing critical care to patients who require immediate medical attention (Tingle, 2019). I was an emergency nurse assisting the medical team in providing urgent care to patients who arrived at the emergency department. I was also responsible for documenting patient care in medical records and communicating with other healthcare professionals to ensure coordinated care. Allen hospital had an EHR system that needed to be fixed in most parts, like, implementing EHR after appropriate training and addressing the cybersecurity issues of the databases. Implementing the system without prior assessments and training challenged the nurses to get familiar with the EHR system (Ogbeide et al., 2022). Wrong prescriptions and adverse dose effects were also widespread there. I had many encounters where patients complained about their electronic medical records being vulnerable to leaks to scammers or fraud through suspicious emails (Al-Muhtadi et al., 2019).

Benefits of EHR

EHRs can improve the health practice of a system in many ways. These include improved patient care coordination by making it easier for healthcare providers to access and share patient information (Atasoy et al., 2019). Allen hospital benefited by implementing an effective EHR system. For example, suppose a patient is admitted to the hospital. In that case, the hospital can quickly access the patient’s electronic health record to obtain necessary medical information relevant to the patient’s current care, helping to avoid medical errors and ensuring the patient receives the appropriate treatment. There are increasing incidents of patient sample misplacement in hospitals (Tabatabaee et al., 2020). Allen hospital can manage medical errors and provide satisfactory care delivery to patients with an EHR system. (Tabatabaee et al., 2020).

While working at Allen hospital, I constantly faced issues managing patient health records and medical history. By implementing an EHR system, such outcomes are avoided. For example, suppose a patient needs a prescription refill. In that case, the nurse can access the patient’s electronic health record and send an electronic prescription to the pharmacy without requiring the patient to visit the provider’s office, resulting in a lower burden on different stakeholders, including nurses and pharmacists. If the system is integrated and online, the nurses and pharmacists do not need to manually prescribe or take care of the dose of the patients (Moore et al., 2020).

Also, there are fewer chances of errors if the system incorporates the specific doses and prescriptions for the patients in the EHR system. For a patient having a known allergy to a medication, the information can be included in the patient’s electronic health record and flagged whenever a healthcare provider attempts to prescribe that medication—helping to prevent adverse drug reactions and improve patient outcomes in Allen hospital (Moore et al., 2020). 

EHRs will make it easier for the healthcare providers of Allen hospital to access patient information quickly and efficiently. For example, suppose multiple healthcare providers treat patients in different locations (interdisciplinary collaboration for patient care). In that case, all providers can access the patient’s electronic health record to obtain up-to-date medical information, test results, and treatment plans, which makes it easier to improve the quality of care and reduce the risk of medical errors. In such cases, the patient demanding the care of different healthcare providers can be accounted for with one integrated system (Atasoy et al., 2019).

With EHRs, public health