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The Imperative of Solving Nurses' Usability Problems With Health Information Technology
Nancy Staggers1, Beth L Elias, Ellen Makar
1Author Affiliations: President and Summit Health Informatics and Adjunct Professor (Dr Staggers), Department of Biomedical Informatics and College of Nursing, University of Utah, Salt Lake City; Associate Professor (Dr Elias), School of Nursing, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond; Senior Director (Dr Makar), Professional Practice, INOVA Fairfax Hospital, Virginia; and Professor (Dr Alexander), School of Nursing, University of Missouri Sinclair, Columbia.
Nurses face significant health information technology (IT) usability challenges impacting patient care and healthcare operations. Addressing these requires greater nursing input in IT design and development.
Area of Science:
- Health Informatics
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Nursing Practice
Background:
- Usability issues in health information technology (IT) are a primary concern for nursing professionals and executives.
- These challenges significantly affect the quality of care and operational efficiency within healthcare settings.
Purpose of the Study:
- To identify specific usability pain points encountered by nurses using health IT.
- To assess the impact and significance of these usability challenges.
- To explore responsibilities and propose solutions for enhancing the nurse-IT user experience.
Main Methods:
- Conducted semistructured interviews with 27 experts, including nursing leaders, informaticists, executives, engineers, researchers, and human factors specialists.
- Included participants from acute care, long-term care, and vendor environments.
- Utilized content analysis to identify recurring themes from the interview data.
Main Results:
- Four major themes emerged: user experience pain points, the importance of these issues, a perceived responsibility gap, and the need for action on usability.
- Identified specific usability challenges that nurses face daily.
- Highlighted the gap in responsibility for addressing and resolving these IT usability problems.
Conclusions:
- Persistent health IT usability issues negatively affect patients, nurses, and healthcare organizations.
- Recommended solutions include amplifying nursing voices nationally and locally, developing digital strategies for nursing, incentivizing IT usability improvements, and better integrating nurses' work into IT design.