Introduction
An electronic health record is a digital kind of a patient’s medical sheet. One of the main characteristics of an electronic health record is that health data can be created and processed by sanctioned providers in an electronic format able to being shared with other workers across more than one healthcare organization. Electronic health records are made to share evidence with other health maintenance workers and establishments – such as research laboratories, experts, drugstores, emergency amenities, and office consulting rooms – so they comprise material from all medical specialists encompassed in a patient’s care. The use of technological expertise and electronic health records must not decrease efficiency and competence, but improve them (Wasserman, 2016). There are a lot of benefits connected to the EHRs that may allow improved medical, administrative, and social outcomes. Some of the possible clinical outcomes include enhancements in the quality of care, patient protection, and patient outcome measures, in addition to a smaller amount of treatment faults. Administrational outcomes are seen in better-quality patient and healthcare provider fulfillment and competent economic and operative performance. Upgraded data gathering procedure supports social benefits through investigation and sustenance of evidence-based care.
EHR examples
Nurses are continually challenged with two issues. Firstly, it is problematic to separate the assistance of nurses to the level of patient care from further health workers. The example, in this case, might be the fact that while earlier studies in the settings of particular institutions have confirmed better quality as a result of electronic health records implementation, the research found no quality alteration between medical care given with and without EHRs. More than a few topical studies have also been unsuccessful in detecting an overtone between electronic health records use and better-quality care (Romano & Stafford, 2011). Secondly, to integrate the uniform terms of nursing care into EHRs without forfeiting personalized patient-focused care is a serious test for the medical system in general. Numerous studies have spoken on the need for more uniformity in the care scheduling methods. Although documentation schemes capture care, logged info is of tiny worth if meaning is not comprehended by all the users. The latter example proves that this lack of connotation between electronic health records and nationwide patient quality of care may mirror early designs of EHR usage in previous studies and the mixed functionality of the systems reviewed (Romano & Stafford, 2011).
A unique EHR function that is of crucial importance to the level of care is clinical decision support that alarms, recaps, or guides health care workers in accordance with the medical guidelines. Nonetheless, less than 50% of hospitals state possessing and using what we outline as at best an elementary electronic health records system (DesRoches et al., 2013). Regardless of noteworthy accomplishments, elaborating the only terminology that would meet all the needs of workers is a good-looking, but hardly reachable goal. As application rate of EHRs stays growing, digital databases comprising data brought together by means of electronic health records will endlessly aggregate (Miriovsky, Shulman, & Abernethy, 2012). Nowadays, the importance of the EHR is carefully assessed by the organizations that are working on creating standards for nursing terminology with the clear aim of simplifying the assessment and exchange of treatment data and that this hard work will result in better unity between nursing terminology and distinct expressions used in other extents of health care.
Personal experience
With numerous research papers on EHR backing the author’s opinion, it is safe to say that the electronic health records systems are not yet properly developed, and the methods of their usage should be continuously reviewed. The main advantage of the EHR, based on the personal experience of the author, is the electronic physician instruction entry, which permits doctors to manage all the orders, drug prescriptions, and other announcements by electronic means, reducing the fault of hand-written prescriptions and permitting other doctors within the hospital network access to the directives. This not only cuts time but also intensely decreases the amount of errors and the risk of potential maltreatment of the patient. Nevertheless, electronic health records system, in fact, increases the doctor’s job. With handwritten records, documents tended to be shorter in length and clearer in meaning. Electronic documentation, on the contrary, is obligatory of doctors before, throughout and subsequently to a patient visit. One of the reasonable ways to solve the problem would be to lessen the number of computer illiterate hospital workers, make the EHR more user-friendly, and simplify the data entry procedures.
Conclusion
EHR or electronic health record are electronic archives of health data. They comprise all the evidence one would discover in a usual paper chart. The EHRs consist of prior medical history, dynamic signs, improvement records, analyses, medications, vaccination dates, allergies, research data and imaging information. They can also cover other appropriate information, for instance, insurance info, demographic facts, and even statistics brought in from individual wellness gadgets. Despite the obvious advantages of this technology, its future seems cloudy. The main obstacles on the path to success in the medical community are the relatively complicated procedure of setting up the EHR and low working speed while processing the database records. The facts that have been discovered throughout the research process are the evidence for the fact that a transition from handwritten records to electronic ones is inevitable, but it should be guided properly. Electronic health records technology is a powerful asset that should be used in more hospitals as in its case the good outweighs the bad.
References
DesRoches, C. M., Charles, D., Furukawa, M. F., Joshi, M. S., Kralovec, P., Mostashari, F., Jha, A. K. (2013). Adoption of Electronic Health Records Grows Rapidly, But Fewer Than Half of US Hospitals Had at Least a Basic System in 2012. Health Affairs, 32(8), 1478-1485. Web.
Miriovsky, B. J., Shulman, L. N., & Abernethy, A. P. (2012). Importance of Health Information Technology, Electronic Health Records, and Continuously Aggregating Data to Comparative Effectiveness Research and Learning Health Care. Journal of Clinical Oncology, 30(34), 4243-4248. Web.
Romano, M. J., & Stafford, R. S. (2011). Electronic Health Records and Clinical Decision Support Systems. Arch Intern Med Archives of Internal Medicine, 171(10). Web.
Wasserman, M. (2016). Electronic Health Records. The Business of Geriatrics, 159-163. Web.