Re: Attitudes of hospital workers towards electronic medical records

[Franklin Valier]

One has to be very cautious when generalizing from the conclusions of a case 
study.  If the test instrument suffers from a shortage of reliability then 
the generalizations will suffer from a shortage of reliability.  What would 
be better is to have a collection of case studies analyzed to see if there 
are any patterns in the studies that can be observed.  Much better than one 
case study.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tim Churches" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <openhealth-list@minoru-development.com>
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2005 10:12 PM
Subject: Re: Attitudes of hospital workers towards electronic medical 
records


Franklin Valier wrote:
Perhaps you are right.  The limitations you point out are indeed very
significant.  However when an individual reads a case study and comes to
the conclusion that this is a major contribution to the development of
knowledge about the subject in question, it needs to be pointed out that
it is just a case study and where case studies fall within the scope of
scientific investigations.
With any study, one needs to consider how generalisable it is. Even
though the study in question is based on a single hospital, its results
are probably generalisable to similar hospitals in Norway implementing
the same information system in the same way. And partially generalisable
to to similar hospitals in other countries implementing the same or
similar information system in the same or similar ways.
Tim C