Evaluating the barriers to point-of-care documentation for nursing staff.
Point-of-care documentation has been identified as a patient safety measure for improving accuracy and timeliness of data. To evaluate the barriers that nurses and nurse aide/clinical technicians encounter for electronic point-of-care documentation, we conducted surveys on a telemetry unit at a southwestern Pennsylvania community hospital. Our first survey revealed that the location of the in-room computers, perceived lack of in-room computer reliability, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act/privacy concerns, and perceptions of the patients' response to charting on computers in patient rooms were all barriers to point-of-care documentation. Our second survey revealed that workflow priority issues were also a barrier to point-of-care documentation, as staff members did not rate documentation as a high priority in terms of delivering timely medical care. Changes in both nursing practices and hospital infrastructure may be needed if these barriers to point-of-care documentation are to be overcome.
School of Nursing, University of Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA. aersher@hvhs.org
Angela
A
Kohle-Ersher
Pooja
P
Chatterjee
Hatice Ulku
HU
Osmanbeyoglu
Harry
H
Hochheiser
Christa
C
Bartos
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D020408:Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015403:Nursing Evaluation Research; D015404:Nursing Methodology Research; D009737:Nursing Records; D009741:Nursing Staff, Hospital / Q000523:psychology*; D019095:Point-of-Care Systems / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D036301:Qualitative Research; D014481:United States; D057188:Workflow; D055815:Young Adult