Module 1, Question 2

IT is affecting me in two different ways. The first is in my clinical practice setting, which is in labor and delivery. The second is in the teaching field. And, of course, there will be an overlap of the two.

We, in L/D are very lucky to have the ability to chart on "the strip." For those not familiar, we run a strip of the baby's heart rate and the mom's contractions. It's like charting on an EKG strip. About a year and a half ago, we switched charting systems. We used to have a great, user-friendly system that was all-inclusive for our needs. We still have a strip system, but it has very limited capabilities. We now have 5 (that I can think of) different and separate systems that we have to know in order to handle all the potential info on our patients. This includes knowing all the different acronyms that the systems go by and having that many different passwords just to get into them. Our readings mentioned that in order for info systems to work, they have to be "intuitive." I think that's why our unit has had such a hard time transitioning from our old system to the new ones: because we went from an intuitive system to a non-intuitive one. We went from a system that made perfect sense to us, as L/D nurses to one that doesn't.

I think patient care is affected in a negative way due to these changes because there is too much time wasted on double charting, for example. I think the time wasted in fiddling with these inefficient systems takes away from patient care. Also, our old system provided us a way to easily track all admissions on each patient. Our current system makes this much more difficult.

I think IT can improve patient outcomes by decreasing mistakes and sharing info between providers, but on our unit, I think the technology that our company chose is making our lives harder.

As far as teaching nursing goes, I have one word: WIMBA.

OK, I don't just have one word concerning teaching nursing. We now have the capability of showing students moving fetal heart rate tracings from our computers, in the classroom, for them to study and analyze. Pretty cool.