News Feature | May 21, 2015

HIMSS Survey: Nurses 'Won't Go Back To Paper'

Katie Wike

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

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According to a survey conducted by HIMSS in honor of Nurses Week, the majority of nurses wouldn’t go back to the way records were before EHR implementation.

Nurses agree, EHRs improve patient safety and most couldn’t do their job without them. HIMSS conducted a survey of more than 600 nurses in honor of National Nurses Week.

“This study is helpful for anyone who wants to better understand how healthcare IT affects nurses, from their point of view,” said Brendan FitzGerald, Research Director at HIMSS Analytics in a press release “Results show that nurses have the highest levels of satisfaction around how EHRs improve the quality of clinical decisions. But there are also findings that indicate EHR vendors could do more to improve nursing workflows.”

EHR Intelligence reports the survey found 71 percent of polled nurses would not consider going back to paper-based medical records while 72 percent stated that EHR systems implementation led to fewer medication errors and enhanced patient safety. Nurses also agreed EHRs enable collaboration with other clinicians inside their organizations (73 percent), but were not in agreement when it came to the efficiency of EHRs as indicated by the following percentages:

  • enable collaboration with clinicians outside their organizations (49 percent)
  • eliminate duplicate work (43 percent)
  • give nurses more time with patients (33 percent)

“One of the things I found when we did the study that jumped out at me was the lack of participation in the buying decision of EHR and HIT solutions by nurses,” FitzGerald told EHR Intelligence. “Obviously, there’s a high level of usage among them on the front lines, but nearly 66 percent said they’d never participated in a buying decision. This blew me away since the [nurses] are the ones that are front-and-center when using it and their feedback is critical.”

“I was surprised by a statistic in the survey that 15 percent of nurses would prefer to go back to paper than use EHRs. Some people would say that 15 percent isn’t a big number, but I can’t even imagine transitioning back to paper after having lived in that world and understanding how difficult it was to manage 8 or 10 patients on the floor with a paper record,” Kerry Bruning, RN, BSN, MBA, Director of Marketing for Sunrise Business Unit at Allscripts exclaimed. “That really surprised me and we’ve had internal brainstorms on why they feel that way.”