Advanced Nursing Technology, Research Paper Example

As a registered nurse at St. Joseph’s Community Hospital, we have recently installed several information systems as replacements for the outdated systems that had reached the end of their lifecycle, such as the Emergency Data Management Systems (EDMS-Medhost). According to hospital administrators, St. Joseph’s has long been one of the leaders in electronic documentation as shown by the implementation of the EDMS-Medhost system in the ER (Nursing Information Systems, 2013). Currently, St. Joseph’s is replacing its old system for storing and retrieving information and data with the Electronic Medication Administration Record or e-MAR. So far, this process has included hospital management, top administrators, physicians, and RNs that work in the medical records department; it has also included hospital clinicians who estimate that the entire switchover will take about 6 months and weeks worth of special training.

Response 1 notes that the era of direct physical contact between a primary care provider and the patient is ending its lifecycle, due to the introduction of the EICU or electronic intensive care unit. Certainly, as observed by the responder, this is the future of medicine, for it will allow nurses and physicians to monitor patients without even stepping into the patient’s room. Of course, it might be somewhat uncomfortable for visitors at first. Response 2 discusses the switch from Cerner, an electronic health records company that now holds 75% of large hospital contracts (Stafford, 2013) to Epic which the responder notes will help physicians to locate patient documentation much quicker. Of course, this is a major change for many physicians, so it is only natural that they might feel intimidated at first with the new Epic system but this could be overcome by intensive training and assistance from specialist provided by the Epic Company.

References

Nursing information systems. (2013). Retrieved from http://stjosephshealth.org/nurses/nursing-information-systems

Stafford, D. (2013). Cerner and Epic dominate health records field. Retrieved from http://www.kansascity.com/2013/08/27/4440510/cerner-and-epic-dominate-health.html