The Role of the Nurse Informaticist/ Nurse Leader in the Development and Implementation of a New System: The Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

For a long time the healthcare sector remained sceptical in adopting technology to assist in the effective delivery of healthcare services. This was until it became apparent to everyone that the world was moving on to another era of technology-driven service delivery and that healthcare practices were becoming obsolete without the adoption of technology. According to Ozair et al. (2015), the introduction of the different types of electronic health records (EHRs) from different vendors was a milestone in the improvement of the quality of healthcare and the storage and access to patient data. As a matter of fact, the signing of the Health Information and Technology for Economic Clinical Health Act (HITECH) in the year 2009 proved to be a watershed moment for technology in healthcare. This piece of legislative policy allowed for the provision of financial incentives to providers who embraced the use of EHRs as a way of encouraging more adoption and implementation of technology in healthcare (Sweeney, 2017). But behind all this, there has always been the realization and appreciation that nurses must be put in the forefront of any development and implementation of any health information system (HIS) adoption initiative. This is because they form the single largest cohort of users of any HIS adopted by a healthcare institution (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017). This paper examines the role of the nurse in the adoption and implementation of a health information system such as an EHR, following particular stages of the system development life cycle (SDLC).  Systems Development Life Cycle

The Role of the Nurse (Graduate Nurse Informaticist/ Nurse Manager) in the Systems Development Life Cycle

The SDLC is a definite process that can be divided into stages through which a new technology system must go before it becomes accepted and fully functional in an organization. In any healthcare organization, nurses are the largest number of end-users that will make use of the HIS daily in their patient care tasks. This is because a majority of the system interfaces such as the electronic medical record (EMR), bar code medication administration (BCMA), and automated medication dispensing cabinets (ADCs) will involve nurses inputting data. For this reason, it is crucial that a nurse informaticist or nurse manager be involved throughout the process of the system development or the SDLC. Below is a discussion of the role of the nurse in the development and implementation of a new system in an organization in the states of (i) planning and requirements definition, (ii) analysis, (iii) design of the novel HIS, (iv) implementation of the system, and (v) post-implementation support (Vivian & Edward, 2019).

Role During Planning and Requirements Definition

Involvement of the nurse informaticist in this phase of the SDLC is crucially important since this is the step that determines what will be included in the system design and what will be left out. And as has already been stated above, nurses being the largest group of users of the new system their perspective must be included if the system is to succeed. It takes a nurse to understand if a particular feature of a system will function in practice or not from a nurse’s viewpoint. Other team members may just take the system at face value, but including the nurse informaticist will provide a level of reality check on the functionality of the system in the clinical area (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017). Systems Development Life Cycle

Role in the Analysis Phase

For the same reasons presented above, the nurse informaticist or nurse manager must be involved in the analysis phase of the system for the impractical features of the system not to be included. She must be allowed to fully examine and analyze the system plan and requirements laid down so that she can give the go-ahead that the system will indeed work well from a nursing perspective or point of view. Not including her may therefore lead to the adoption of a system that turns out to be of practically no use to nurses, hence the loss of money. This is true because if nurses cannot practically use a system to capture patient data, then the system is as good as useless for the organization.

Role in the Design Phase

Building on the same reasons for inclusion of the nurse informaticist in the SDLC described above, the nurse must also be consulted during the system design phase. This is a crucial phase as this is the period of time that the actual system concept is put into reality or actualized. Even though the nurse informaticist will have participated in the previous stages, she needs to be included in this stage too as this is the time that she may spot some small unworkable detail that may have been overlooked initially.

Role in the System