Work practice changes caused by the introduction of a picture archiving and communication system

We studied the acceptance of work practice changes six months after the introduction of a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) in New South Wales. A one-page questionnaire was developed to assess doctors' and nurses' acceptance of work practice changes. Over 100 subjects were surveyed and 76 responded. In all, 92% of participants worked in the intensive-care unit (ICU) or the emergency department (ED). The results showed that the PACS had received a high level of acceptance. The respondents would not like to return to a film-based practice. They were happy with the accessibility of images, especially when patients returned from an X-ray examination. At the time of survey, the doctors still had difficulty in remembering their user name and password. The users rarely or only sometimes used their own user names and passwords to log on the system. They were sometimes annoyed by the automatic time-out function. Nurses were happy that the PACS relieved their burden of searching for X-ray images for doctors. However, they distanced themselves from accessing the PACS, which they regarded as a doctors' tool.