Nursing in the Electronic Era
by Teddi Fine
Healthcare is getting wired; hand-written notes and charts are being replaced by keyboards and CPUs. Because nurses are the 24-hour, frontline healthcare managers at patients’ bedsides, their notes that help guide treatment need to be accurate, complete, timely and, today, digital.
That’s where JHUSON assistant professor Laura A. Taylor, PhD, RN, and instructors Krysia Hudson, MS, RN-C; Joyce Vazzano, MS, RN, CRNP; Phyllis Naumann, MS, RN; and Maggie Neal, PhD, RN, enter the picture. This Hopkins nursing HIT (health information technology) squad is working to integrate knowledge of these new technologies into nursing education.
In “The electronic health record meets baccalaureate nursing curriculum: Stories from the battlefield,” [Nurse Leader, June 2010], they describe ways to season routine student clinical practice sessions with a dash of electronic record keeping to make accurate digital recordkeeping a natural part of a nurse’s workflow. One of the barriers? Too many older faculty who resist new practices, such as electronic records.
Taylor’s response is to help educate the educators, too. She says, “Nurses need the savvy and confidence to navigate these emerging healthcare technologies. The result will lead to improved health, patient and family satisfaction, and, ultimately, confidence in the entire healthcare system.”