A Comparison of Voice Recognition Program and Traditional Keyboard Charting for Nurse Documentation

Area of Science:

• Nursing Informatics
• Health Information Technology
• Clinical Documentation

Background:

• Electronic health records (EHR) necessitate efficient documentation methods.
• Voice recognition (VR) systems are proposed to reduce clinical documentation time.
• Limited data exists on the actual time savings provided by VR for nurses.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare documentation times between VR and keyboard charting.
• To evaluate the error rates associated with each documentation method.
• To identify factors influencing documentation duration.

Main Methods:

• Pilot simulation study with 15 acute care nurses.
• Crossover design with repeated measures.
• Nurses documented two simple and two complex scenarios using both VR and keyboard charting.

Main Results:

• VR systems reduced documentation time by 2.3 minutes (simple) and 6.1 minutes (complex) on average (P < .001).
• No significant differences in documentation errors were found between VR and keyboard charting.
• 80% of nurses preferred VR, and 87% found it sped up charting.

Conclusions:

• Voice recognition systems offer a significant time-saving advantage for nursing documentation over traditional keyboard entry.
• VR technology can enhance charting efficiency without negatively impacting documentation accuracy.
• The study supports the adoption of VR systems to improve nurse workflow and reduce documentation burden.