Grant: Project Grant

As the largest group of care providers, nurses are the primary users of the electronic health record (EHR). Their main use of EHR systems is charting health and nursing information. When nurses use hybrid charting systems (i.e., EHR and paper) or struggle to use the EHR, this increases burden and consumes their time. A single-EHR that completely replaces patient paper records and has advanced features has been rolled out in Alberta. This gives us an exciting opportunity to study nurses' charting practices in this EHR and its impact. This project aims to examine the experiences of nurses with EHR use, identify ways to enhance EHR systems, and support optimal practice with digital health technologies among Canadian nurses. We will 1) analyze nurses' charting data in the EHR to determine patterns of utilization in acute care settings, 2) examine nurses' perspectives and experiences with EHR use to obtain in-depth insights about the factors they believe are facilitating or hindering optimal use of the EHR, and 3) engage nurses in identifying strategies to improve EHR user experience and the EHR. This work creates a direction forward on how nurses can gain a greater utility of EHR systems to improve nursing and healthcare outcomes; thereby optimizing nurses' use of the EHR beyond basic data entry and ensuring their valuable time is spent in caring for patients. Therefore, nurses, nursing leadership, policy makers, and nurse educators will find the results useful. Findings will also improve the education of future nurses on the proper use of health technology. This is important so that Canadians can receive optimal care with the support of digital tools. Our team includes decision-maker knowledge users, trainees, and researchers who developed this study and will share the results through seminars, reports, research briefs, and social media. We will also report the findings in professional meetings and publish them in journals. We will conduct the study over 3 years.