Sure, but the introduction of anasthesia greatly increased the time a
surgeon spent doing surgery. It also relieved tremendous suffering and
greatly broadened what could be done with surgery as well as improving
outcomes dramatically. The VA VistA experience with its dramatic and
demonostrable improvement with patient outcomes is an example. A
simplistic reply for me to this studies conclusion is: so what?
-- IV
On Fri, 06 May 2005 10:15:16 +0100
"J. Antas" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
A study published at the Acta Anaesthesiol Scand. (2005
Jan;49(1):62-5.)
documents what seems to be an emerging (and rather unexpected)
trend:
Clinical IT (HIS) systems increase the time that healthcare workers
spend documenting their activities and not the other way around.
One could always argue that those systems bring other advantages to
the
patient and to the care providers, but the fact still remains: they
take
extra time from the healthcare providers and we should be aware of
that.
The article "Does the implementation of a clinical information
system
decrease the time intensive care nurses spend on documentation of
care?", by Saarinen K, Aho M. of the Department of Intensive Care
Medicine, Seinajoki Central Hospital, Seinajoki, Finland, reports:
"BACKGROUND: The number of intensive care units (ICU) using a
clinical
information system (CIS) is increasing. It is believed that
replacing
manual charting with an automatic documentation system allocates
nurses
more time for patient care. The objective of this study was to
measure
changes in nurses' working time utilization after the implementation
of
a CIS in a polyvalent ICU of a large Finnish central hospital.
METHODS:
An activity analysis-based comparison of the ICU nurses' working
time
utilization before and after the implementation of a CIS.
.../...
CONCLUSIONS: After the implementation of a CIS, an increase in the
time
nurses spent on documentation of care was detected, which suggests a
need for further development of the system. As all the measured time
changes were relatively small, any plans to reduce the ICU staff
number
with the aid of computers were not justified."
Source URL:
http://e-healthexpert.org/node/120
Links:
PMID: 15675984 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] , "Does the
implementation
of a clinical information system decrease the time intensive care
nurses
spend on documentation of care?"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15675984&dopt=Abstract
