On Fri, 2005-05-06 at 04:15, J. Antas 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.
With paper records, the nurses in my institution may spend an hour or more *after* their scheduled shift is done, creating the paper record. If an IT system requires concurrent documentation, any time-and-motion study will find the IT system to require more time for record creation because the record-creation activities often occur "out of sight" in the paper world. My own experience, rather limited I must say, is that getting *to* the data-recording step with IT can be rather cumbersome, even if the actual typing is easy. A "smart" system will pop up the entry fields when needed, but making it "smart" may be quite an undertaking indeed. Dan Johnson md
