Qualitative analysis of end user computing strategy and experiences in promoting nursing informatics in Taiwan

The purpose of this study was to analyse end user computing strategy and experiences in promoting nursing informatics in Taiwan. In February 2004, an 8-day NI technology training campaign was held in Taipei for 60 clinical nurses. Excel VBA was used as the tool to teach the clinical nurses, who had never written any programs, but were very interested in informatics. Three projects were determined after detailed discussion and evaluation of clinical needs and technical feasibility between the nurses and the technical support team, which was composed of one experienced informatics professor and one clinical NI assistant. A qualitative analysis was used to interview the three pairs of programming clinical nurses and their direct supervisors with a structured but open questionnaire. Representative concepts were categorized from the data until all were categorized. The concepts were organized under three categories: the purposes, the benefits and the challenges of system development. According to this study, end user computing strategy with Excel VBA was successful so far.