Nurses' Adoption, Perceived Usability, and Satisfaction with an Updated Electronic Handover Page Within the...

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Nursing Practice
• Patient Safety

Background:

• Effective clinical handover is vital for patient care and error reduction in hospitals.
• Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems can enhance patient safety through contemporaneous documentation during handover.
• This study addresses the need to evaluate digital health tool updates in clinical settings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess nurses' adoption rates of an updated EMR handover page.
• To evaluate nurses' perceived usability and satisfaction with the revised handover interface.
• To identify implications for future digital health technology implementation.

Main Methods:

• A pre-post mixed-methods study was conducted in a large Australian tertiary healthcare organization.
• EMR data tracked handover page adoption, while surveys measured usability and satisfaction.
• Quantitative (descriptive, inferential statistics) and qualitative (content analysis) data were analyzed.

Main Results:

• No statistically significant change in handover page adoption post-update.
• Significant improvement in usability: reduced need to navigate away for information (p=0.042).
• Increased nurse satisfaction with information precision (p=0.040) and sufficiency (p=0.034).

Conclusions:

• The co-designed EMR handover page demonstrated good usability and satisfaction among nurses.
• While adoption was not significant, improvements in usability and satisfaction were noted.
• Ongoing evaluation by informatics teams is essential for optimizing digital health tools for nurses and patient safety.