As I was preparing our powerpoint presentation on the EHR I was looking through some generic sources. I didn’t want just one EHR and its pros and cons, I wanted to know what the public sees and has access to. One website I found that I really liked was http://enwikipedia.org. It was a very generic website that covered a lot of topics and was very much on a lay person’s level. The EHR is here and I think it is here to stay. I think it is a very good use of our technology and patients are seeing the benefit from it.
Where do I see the future going with this and the EHR, I think our possibilities are endless and as more is seen, done and tweaked, I think it will just get better from here. For nursing schools, I would like to see more courses in health informatics. I was not crazy about this class to begin with but I now see how much I have learned, how much the information and knowledge I have gained can be put to good use in my career. I think that nursing is going computerized for a lot of things and I think nursing students need to be ready rather than the deer in the headlight look when they are on a floor or clinic with a computer in front of them.
As I read for my power point about safety and the EHR it made me think about what else we need in place to better protect our patients from a HIPAA violation. When you work on the floor anyone can walk up to the desk and ask about a patient. Most of us are good about asking for a name and checking to see if that person is on the PHI form. But do any of us really know who those people are? Do we really trust that they are who they say they are? How do we make sure we are not exposing someone to harm? Do we use driver’s license for ID, do we ask the patient before the visitor goes in if they know this person and are okay with them coming in. What do we do to keep our patient and ourselves self. I wish I could say the world was getting kinder but it is not. I attended a class yesterday about HZMAT, biochemical weapons, disasters, and health care. What I heard scared me and made me wonder if we are prepared for what the world may throw at us. With all of our technology, the retinal scanning, the passwords, the fingerprinting, firewall, that there could be something out there that would make us know who is really seeing our patients.
I think nurses have to be ready for change, they need to try and embrace it. I know when we went live with our EHR where I work there was a lot of grumbling and eye-rolling. I did some myself but then I realized what an opportunity we had and what a blessing for our patients and other healthcare providers to have that information at their fingertips rather than digging through a paper chart. We are the front line defense for our patients and we need to use the technology we have available for the better good of our patients. Our patients depend on us to have accurate information and have it quickly when we need it to provide the best care possible for them. So I think we need to be aware of all that is out there, learn from it, and use it for our patient’s greater good. It is always about the patients so we need to reach out for change and so go for it.
