NURS 6051 THE INCLUSION OF NURSES IN THE SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE
NURS 6051 THE INCLUSION OF NURSES IN THE SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE
As nurses, we have a unique opportunity to provide valuable input when healthcare organizations make changes that will impact patient care. The influence that nurses provide can range from helping develop a new technological upgrade (such as a new electronic health record database) or developing protocols to help improve patient outcomes. For example, a study by (Moore et al., 2019) demonstrated how a nurse-driven implementation of a sepsis-bundle algorithm helped improve timely interventions from 30% to 80% after just two months. In this case, nurses acted on the opportunity to create a checklist that helped decrease the number of sepsis fallouts, hence improving the quality of patient outcomes.
When referring to the Systems Development Life Cycle, SDLC, including nurses along each step can prove to be a tremendous benefit due to the high number of nurses that use the products or databases on a regular basis. As mentioned by (Kelley, 2019), “The implementation and adoption of EHRs…across healthcare settings brought to the forefront the absolute dependency that nurses…have on data, information and knowledge to deliver quality care”. With that said, it is important for nurses to be involved in the planning, design, implementation and maintenance with any new health information technology system.
During the planning and development of a new system, meeting the organization’s needs are at the forefront of the “why” this new technology should be implemented (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2018). In my case, for example, my organization is in the process of transitioning from Cerner to Epic, and it is currently in its infancy stages. Allowing nurses to provide feedback during this phase will benefit everyone involved. Nurses have a lot of experience with documentation, and in fact, heavily rely on the electronic health record throughout all of the interactions with the patient. Feedback such as usability, assessment documentation, interface, accessing clinical notes and lab notes can help the developers better understand how to create an interface that is useful for nurses to use. For example, nurse leaders can arrange for staff nurses to provide a list of things that they would like to see in the new database, or perhaps explain what they could change about their current database.
After collecting all of the feedback, the development team can come together and find a way to analyze the feedback and use it to help categorize the main points that need to be addressed during the planning stage. If nurses are not included in the feedback during the planning phase, it can create unnecessary ramifications, such as patient care delays due to more time spent on searching through the patient’s records if the EHR lacks usability.
During the implantation phase, nurses must be able to provide feedback that can help facilitate the best outcomes. Once again, in my example of the EPIC development, there are going to be a few “superusers”, including nurses, that will be designated to help train other staff members on their units or throughout the hospital. I have personally expressed interest in becoming a superuser for the ED when EPIC is closer to replacing Cerner.
During the maintenance phase, nurses continue to be pillars in the success of any implementation. If the system works, the workflow will be acceptable, and nurses can get their jobs done. If major adjustments need to be made due to “technological advances or…new project being launched” (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2018), then the SDLC will restart, hopefully with nursing input along the way.
References
Kelley, T. (2019). Emergence of nursing innovation influenced by advances in informatics and health IT. Nurse Leader, 17(6), 531–536. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mnl.2019.09.012
McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2018). Nursing Informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Moore, W. R., Vermuelen, A., Taylor, R., Kihara, D., & Wahome, E. (2019). Improving 3-Hour sepsis bundled care outcomes: Implementation of a nurse-driven sepsis protocol in the emergency department. Journal of Emergency Nursing, 45(6). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jen.2019.05.005
