Evaluation of a Mobile Station Electronic Health Record on Documentation Compliance and Nurses' Attitudes

Electronic Health Record (EHR) Systems have been adopted by healthcare organizations for documentation of patient care. Often these information systems are embedded in mobile nurse stations. As part of assessing the impact of this technology it is important to determine the effect it has on charting compliance and user acceptance. Data were collected at a medical center in Taiwan in two stages. The first stage involved use of a 28-item medical review tool to measure charting compliance in 99 charts before and after implementation of the EHR system. In stage two, a survey was conducted with 709 nurse users to determine their level of mobile EHR acceptance 3 months after this documentation technology was initiated. Results demonstrated that EHR significantly improved documentation compliance in standardized data entry format (name, date, time), abbreviation, content correction/revision, patient care needs, and care goals. Analysis of data from the five categories of a user acceptance survey revealed the following results (based on a 4-point Likert scale): patient care (2.92), nursing efficiency (2.78), education and training (2.98), usability (2.61), and usage benefits (2.87). The study concluded that use of mobile nurse stations with EHR can improve documentation compliance and that although frequent system downtime needs improvement, nurses generally have positive attitudes toward this technology application.