Re: Attitudes of hospital workers towards electronic medical records

[Joseph Dal Molin]

This is another example of garbage in = garbage out. I can't understand 
how studies like this with a sample size of one,  are allowed to be 
published in what appears to be a "scholarly journal". I have often 
questioned the quality of peer review in academic medical informatics 
because of articles like this one....and the CPOE study that was 
discussed earlier...perhaps the journal themselves should be rated by 
peers??? This combined with the software industry's legacy business 
model and marketing are the greatest enemies for innovation in health 
care IT....feel free to add more to the list.

Joseph
J. Antas wrote:
An article with conclusions that correlates well with our own knowledge 
about the set up and administration of Hospital Information Systems 
(HIS), has been published by the "BMC Medical Informatics Decision 
Making" magazine.

 From that article abstract:
BACKGROUND:
 This case report describes a HIS in a Norwegian hospital where the 
paper-based medical records were scanned and eliminated.
 To evaluate the HIS comprehensively, the perspectives of medical 
secretaries and nurses are described as well as that of physicians.

METHODS:
 We have used questionnaires and interviews to assess and compare 
frequency of use of the HIS for essential tasks, task performance and 
user satisfaction among medical secretaries, nurses and physicians.

CONCLUSIONS:
 ... the results support the assertion that *replacing the paper-based 
medical record primarily benefits the medical secretaries, and to a 
lesser degree the nurses and the physicians*
 The varying results in the different employee groups emphasize the need 
for a multidisciplinary approach when evaluating a HIS.

The article, named "Use of and attitudes to a hospital information 
system by medical secretaries, nurses and physicians deprived of the 
paper-based medical record: a case report",
and has just been made freely available at: 
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=15488150 

reports
J. Antas
.