NURS 6051 walden university EHR Flowchart

NURS 6051 walden university EHR Flowchart

NURS 6051 walden university EHR Flowchart

Workflow analysis aims to determine workflow patterns that maximize the effective use of resources and minimize activities that do not add value. There are a variety of tools that can be used to analyze the workflow of processes and clarify potential avenues for eliminating waste. Flowcharts are a basic and commonly used workflow analysis method that can help highlight areas in need of streamlining.

In this Assignment, you select a common event that occurs regularly in your organization and create a flowchart representing the workflow. You analyze the process you have diagrammed and propose changes for improvement.

To prepare:

  • Identify a common, simple event that frequently occurs in your organization that you would like to evaluate.
  • Consider how you would design a flowchart to represent the current workflow.
  • Consider what metrics you would use to determine the effectiveness of the current workflow and identify areas of waste.

To complete: NURS 6051 walden university EHR Flowchart

Write a 3- to 5-page paper which includes the following:

  • Create a simple flowchart of the activity you selected. (Review the Sample Workflow of Answering a Telephone in an Office document found in this week’s Learning Resources for an example.)
  • Next, in your paper:
    • Explain the process you have diagrammed.
    • For each step or decision point in the process, identify the following:
      • Who does this step? (It can be several people.)
      • What technology is used?
      • What policies and rules are involved in determining how, when, why, or where the step is executed?
      • What information is needed for the execution of this step?
    • Describe the metric that is currently used to measure the soundness of the workflow. Is it effective? nurs 6051 walden university EHR Flowchart
    • Describe any areas where improvements could occur and propose changes that could bring about these improvements in the workflow.
    • Summarize why it is important to be aware of the flow of an activity.
  • Remember to include a cover page, introduction, and summary for your paper.

Learning Resources

NURS 6051 walden university EHR Flowchart Required Readings

McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2017). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

  • Chapter 1, “Nursing Science and the Foundation of Knowledge” (pp. 7–19)
  • Chapter 2, “Introduction to Information, Information Science, and Information Systems” (pp. 21–33)
  • Chapter 3, “Computer Science and the Foundation of Knowledge Model” (pp. 35–62)

Nagle, L., Sermeus, W., & Junger, A. (2017).  Evolving Role of the Nursing Infomatics Specialist. In J. Murphy, W. Goosen, &  P. Weber  (Eds.), Forecasting Competencies for Nurses in the Future of Connected Health (212-221). Clifton, VA: IMIA and IOS Press. Retrieved from https://serval.unil.ch/resource/serval:BIB_4A0FEA56B8CB.P001/REF

Adoption of new technology system

Name: Isaac Kuffour

Instructor: Camilla Jaekel, Ph.D

Course: NURS 6051 Transforming Nursing and Healthcare through Technology

Date: January 7th, 2019

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Our health care facility should implement the modern technology of the electronic health record so as to help us in enhancing our lives and the lives of patients. Discussion and sharing of information is a vital tool to enhance staff-based competency assessment. In developing electronic health records, it guarantees eligible nurse members to share information within a facility (Valdez, 2008).

However, the extensive knowledge and diverse professional application for which each nurse is accessing the electronic health records end up giving rise to care service gaps and problems. Job and assigned tasks to the nursing teams seem to have a conflicting interest violating the informatics systems that require a consistent flow of information from medical practitioners down to the nurses.

The patient care errors developed by the study stem from the sharing of vital information issues alleged by the junior staff against the physicians. Despite the clear tasks assigned there is a problem that disintegrates the flow of data in the working environment that can result in service errors (Rogers & Effken, 2003). The electronic health records will have essential strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities to the informatics that control preceptee information management. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) promote patient-centered care, enhance the quality of services, and educate all stakeholders in healthcare.

In creating the electronic information system for the practicum project, it will offer an up to date annual education for the nurse preceptor, preceptee, in-service dates, and rollout opportunities (Valdez, 2008). The system connects through an on-campus network or VPN using EAD account in which information can be shared within the facility. However, weaknesses and threats arise when the staff member ignores to operate on the electronic health records to navigate the information on their side and that of juniors.

With the need to prioritize client interest and address the threat, a collaboration website developed ensures all staff can immediately access all process documents, procedures, schedules, and other resources. Thus the electronic health record acts as a virtual file cabinet of information that can open up to more opportunities such as engaging management information, communication, and automated decision-making systems (Newhouse, Hoffman, Suflita, and Hairston, 2007). The integration of the EHR into nursing practice encourages new relationships between experienced nurses and newly hired colleagues to avoid a conflict of roles and interests.

In addition, other outcomes from a well-coordinated EHR include improved nursing practice environment, processes, professional satisfaction, and a good overview of the unit health. Planning is a vital tool to an organization. As a communication and information sharing instrument, the system can have the capability to integrate short, medium and long-term goals for the nurses and staff (Rogers & Effken, 2003). The external goals involve bridging the interests of inpatient care needs which acts as a major gap that limits standard care. The linkage within the internal structures creates a two-way communication between the hired nurses and already experienced colleagues for better tracking of the clients’ overall care.

Currently, there is no form of communication between the co-preceptors in evaluating the preceptee in real time. Preceptors are usually scrambling to fill out evaluation and dates when the essential task is performed for preceptee at the end of the evaluation (Newhouse, Hoffman, Suflita, and Hairston, 2007). With the electronic health records, there will be real-time evaluation so that preceptors will know what preceptees have learned or been taught from filling out the evaluation form in real-time. Communication and sharing of information within the nursing realm enhance care activities.

Data collection and analysis will rely on individual planning transformational metrics set within the nursing staff (Valdez, 2008). To measure the success of the system, critique forms will be utilized to see whether senior preceptors are utilizing and satisfied with the system in coordinating preceptee evaluation. Success will be measured if the staff is utilizing the system as intended. The developed facility electronic health record tends to offer conclusive information about all activities related to preceptee services when well implemented.

The positive results achieved assess how best to merge the facility use of technology to source information from each other, analyze and make it useful for outstanding care (Newhouse, Hoffman, Suflita, and Hairston, 2007). When nurses utilize the EHR it serves as a central link between the preceptee and preceptors to access information from each side to ensure a credible care system.

With increased demand on the need to use information and communication technologies the service delivery units in healthcare provisions serve as a primary target to implement the objective (Valdez, 2008). That notwithstanding, studying communication and information sharing within inpatient units shows how useful the nursing informatics has currently transformed entire healthcare systems.

In a setting that devised technological nursing data transition platforms connect the patient, nurse, and the care practitioner the scope of this study will fit the organization mission of providing compassionate, evidence-based nursing care to patients and families living with cancer in healing and innovative environment (Newhouse, Hoffman, Suflita, and Hairston, 2007). The EHR helps the preceptors offer information that the other preceptor used to boost service delivery among recruits.

The project helps in the facilitation of the newly hired nurse recruits to have a natural linkage to new responsibilities (Valdez, 2008). The roles involved which define sharing information system are that relying on the nursing informatics is bounded by formal facility procedures. Rather than much reliance on technology the hospital strategic plan might require all information shared to general practitioners to have personal clinician consent.

A clinical unit operating under a busy schedule of inpatient services needs to initiate agent information transition systems. The concept entitles a care center clerk with communication obligations of receiving conveyed electronic data and verbal information to minimize distraction to the clinical staff (Newhouse, Hoffman, Suflita, and Hairston, 2007). The outcomes of the study will impact patients, nurses, and care practitioners as the primary role players to enhance the success of care services.

The EHR attracts no considerable expense given that it’s free and always available to faculty across the organization (Rogers & Effken, 2003). However, the system can always be improved and decisions regarding relevant information on the EHR will be eligible for all faculties who are able to access the system. The experienced nurses hired clinical staff, and any other relevant care stakeholder takes part in developing a strategy that receives and manipulate the EHR.

Analyzing the role of nurses as change agents in facilitating the adoption of new technology

The role of a nurse is not only about a series of skills, knowledge, and competencies acquired from college. In fact, being a nurse is part of the socialization process that involves the process of internalization and professional identity development. As a registered nurse in the Emergency Department, I must, therefore, understand how the adoption of new technology in nursing would lead to the efficient assumption of my roles as a nurse (Valdez, 2008).

In nursing, professional identity and sense of belonging facilitate easy adoption of new technology in the workplace. Professionalism is a crucial nursing concept that I can only acquire through interpersonal, individual-work-place and interaction relationship with my clients and my colleagues in the Emergency Department and the health facility at large.

Through interactions with my patients in the Emergency Department, I have realized that developing as a nurse a sense of becoming that involves internalization of values and personal dedication during the professional socialization process with the patients, staff, and management at the workplace (Newhouse, Hoffman, Suflita, and Hairston, 2007). How I view myself as a nurse entails professional identity and socialization with my patient has enabled me to appreciate that I am a nurse who can perform my nursing responsibly and skilfully by adopting new technologies. Many emergency cases that I have handled in the Emergency Department have been so successful with only one exception where the patient was referred to us after he had passed on.

I have learned to consult a lot with my fellow experts in the department to ensure that we offer the best health services to the patients referred to us. Socialization has enabled me to acquire the required knowledge and skills to accomplish my professional with professional and valued norms through continuous consultation with the medics with more experience than me. I have internalized values of the nursing profession that are paramount for my professional development since they offer a ground for moral behaviors (Valdez, 2008). Through professional socialization, I have obtained the necessary dedication in the profession with critical thinking, and problem-solving practices needed in nursing.

In nursing practice, planned change is essential for a broad range of reasons. However, implementing the change theory may be challenging. Comprehending and applying the change theory would increase my likelihood of success as I install the digital way to take data of patient within the Emergency Department. Sophisticated comprehensions of organizational change and organizational dynamics are critical for the development and success of initiative of digital data entry and storage health promotion in the Emergency Department (Newhouse, Hoffman, Suflita, and Hairston, 2007).

The change theory has crucial contributions to help me in comprehending organizational change, identifying valuable factors which I should focus on as I install the digitalize the process of data entry and storage of clients within the Emergency Department and in the selection of the most appropriate strategies which could be used to enhance this change.

Nursing refers to an art, a technology, or assisting services which ensure the well-being of other people. Activities intentionally selected and carried out by nurses should help people or groups under their care change or maintain the conditions in their environments or themselves. Rogers (2003) nursing includes the health condition perspective of the patient, the perspective of the physicians, as well as the nursing perspectives.

Once the needs are determined, the nurses have to choose the needed nursing systems to offer care: educative and supportive systems and wholly compensatory. The care should be provided according to the deficit level. Immediately the care is offered, the activities of nursing and nursing systems use can be evaluated to get an idea about whether the mutually planned objectives are achieved or not.

NURS 6051 walden university EHR Flowchart References

  1. Rogers, S. and Effken, J. (2003). Studies in perception and action VII. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.
  2. Newhouse, R. P., Hoffman, J. J., Suflita, J., & Hairston, D. P. (2007).Evaluating an innovative program to improve new nurse graduate socialization into the acute healthcare setting.Nursing administration quarterly, 31(1), 50-60.
  3. Valdez, A. M. (2008). Transitioning from novice to competent: what can we learn from the literature about graduate nurses in the emergency setting?. Journal of Emergency Nursing, 34(5), 435-440.

The Flowchart for psychiatric admission

Stanley Okeyemi

NURS 6051: Transforming Nursing and Healthcare Through Technology

Walden University

January 22nd, 2017

The purpose of this paper is to identify, discuss, and evaluate the workflow process my organization has adopted for the admission of new patients from the inception of their arrival to the hospital, with a transition of being admitted to the inpatient unit or getting discharge, and the various steps involved in this process, by utilizing a designed flowchart for the transitional care of patients from the intake departments to the units.

Workflow in nursing informatics could be defined as a progression of tasks, events, and interactions that are designed to add value to the work process of an organization’s activities (McGonigle and Mastrian, 2015). While workflow is termed as stated, it also involves the execution of a series of tasks in a predetermined sequence (McGonigle and Mastrian, 2015).

With an understanding of this definition, this paper will further discuss the different roles health care workers play in my organization workflow process, and the metrics utilized to measure the effectiveness of the workflow, and then identify possible areas of waste.

The organization I am currently employed with is an 84-bed inpatient mental and behavioral health facility, dedicated to serving the specialized needs of children, adolescents, adults, and seniors with mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and stress, bipolar disorder, behavioral problems, and alcohol abuse dependency.

This organization accepts patients that are voluntary walk-ins, transfers from other facilities like medical hospitals, group homes, nursing homes, and from other behavioral health hospitals (per patients request or due to insurance reasons). Also, patients that present with police officers under a detention warrant (DW) are also included in this category of candidates for admission, except on rare occasions where an officer may present with a patient on a voluntary status, after the officer assumes that this patient just needs help with a police escort to a behavioral facility, and the patients presenting behavioral or complain is not justifiable to be under a warrant.

Upon patients arrival to the hospital’s front desk lobby by any of these means listed above, the receptionist at the front desk lobby is always present to receive and welcome them into the facility. This receptionist immediately registers this patient’s arrival information on the electronic computer screen for a free assessment as part of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which is a federal law that requires anyone coming to an emergency department to be stabilized and treated, regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay for treatment.

A Mental Health Technician (MHT) and a Licensed Master Social Worker (LMSW) are called upon via phone by the receptionist with information about the arrival of this new patient. The MHT and LMSW then walk up to the front desk lobby to escort this patient to an assessment room in the intake department for an interview, and also to promote privacy as part of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which is a legislative law that provides data privacy and security provisions for safeguarding patient’s medical information.

In this chamber, a handheld security detector is used to wand this patient and also physically searched for contrabands as part of the hospital policy and procedure, and also the Joint Commission standard of practice in ensuring the safety of this patient and every other one around in the facility. The MHT then enters the assessment room to check the patient’s vital signs with an electronic blood pressure monitor. The LMSW at this time starts to complete an integrated psychosocial assessment on this patient.

Upon completion, the patients information is inputted in the Electronic Health Record (EHR) computer system called ‘ReadyAnswer’ in a SBAR (S-Situation, B-Background, A-Assessment and R-Recommendation) format, and then forwarded to the Telemedicine admitting physician via the computer to view all the necessary information needed to be known about this patient before any video encounter begins between this physician and the patient.

This phase of a video encounter and assessment of the patient by the physician, also known as Telemedicine is a major step along this transition because it determines if the patient would be getting admitted to the facility, getting discharged, or referred to the outpatient day clinic. Based on this patient’s presenting and past history, the LMSW recommendation, and the physician’s assessment of the patient with his or her qualified experience, a final recommendation is made about this patient presenting status.

Once the physician completes his interview and makes his or her recommendation, he puts the orders in the Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) in the patients EHR, which almost always includes the patients admitting diagnoses, some form of laboratory work, specific precautions and observations, medications, with a host of other orders for the nurses to carry out.

If a patient is recommended for discharge or outpatient care, but initially presented under DW with a police officer, the DW is lifted-off by the physician and a cab is called upon and requested to drop off patient back to their place of residence to ensure they are adequately and safely discharged to their place of residence as part of the hospital discharge safety plan for patients, otherwise if a patient is recommended for an inpatient admission, then the patient would be transferred to the unit for a continuous care and monitoring by the nurses and the attending physicians on the units.

Leaders of healthcare organizations often design workflow with efficiency and effectiveness in mind (Laureate Education, 2012f). With a well-designed system in my organization to ensure an efficient and effective admission transition, Time and cost, are tools currently used to measure the soundness of the workflow and the quality of care we provide to our patients from the moment they walk into our facility.

As part of our hospital policy to ensure a timely transition in the admission process, a maximum of a one-hour window time frame as been implemented for this admission process, which is being daily evaluated and audited by the intake manager based on the information entered in our electronic EMTALA log by the receptionist in an entirely different department as previously stated. In evaluating cost as a tool for the measurement for effective workflow and quality care, there is a defined amount of employee scheduled to work in this department daily and around the clock.

These employees range from the physician to the LMSW and MHT, who are scheduled based on the organizations budget to meet up with the influx of patients seeking a psychiatric evaluation.

In my opinion, a missing piece to this line of admission process where improvements could occur to bring about a change in the workflow is the involvement of nurses in this admission process. Nurses possess much-advanced skills that could help with a better coordination of this transition. With the presence of a nurse, a patient can be assessed upon arrival for any medical concerns that immediately needs to be addressed and referred out for medical clearance in the medical emergency department.

Also, if the Telemedicine physician considers a patient suitable for discharge or recommends an outpatient treatment, but the nurse physically present with this patient has a doubt about this decision based on his or her own assessment, this patient can then be advocated for by this nurse by presenting his or her concerns about the circumstances surrounding his or her opinion about this suggestion. Lastly, the ability to critically think, and the application of evidence-based knowledge to make sound decisions in a situation where a Telemedicine physician is temporary unreachable due to a situation like technical difficulties experienced in the phase of admission makes the presence of a nurse in this line of admission critical.

In ensuring the delivery of a safe and quality care to patients by healthcare professionals, it is important for nurse managers to be aware of the flow of activities and implement changes or adjustments as necessary for an adequate workflow patterns that maximize the effective use of resources and minimize activities that brings about waste of resources. In a situation experienced by my organization, in reckoning that importance of a nurse in this admission process could bring about quality improvement.

NURS 6051 walden university EHR Flowchart References

  1. McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2015). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (3rd ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning
  2. Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2012f). System design and workflow. Baltimore, MD: Author.
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