Electronic Health Records

Methods

Our goal for the research paper was to think of a topic we found interesting. We had some broad topics and everyone voted on which topic they preferred and ultimately we decided to research about Electronic Health Records. After that, we needed to make it more specific so we narrowed it down to the implementation processes and barriers that arise when implementing electronic health records. We started doing some research and looking for peer reviewed articles and journals, yet we found there was still too much information to choose from so we narrowed it down further to focus merely on electronic health record implementation in hospital settings; therefore, which we could throw out any information on clinics, urgent care facilities and other small practices.

When looking for articles we used many search engines and databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, MedlinePlus, Academic Search Complete, Web of Science, and JSTOR.

We used some key terms in order to narrow our findings to fit exactly what we were looking for. Some key terms used were “implementation of electronic health record,” “electronic health record in hospitals,” “impact of electronic health record adoption,” “impact of electronic health record on staff, “adoption of health records regarding finances,” “electronic health record impact on nurses,” “issues of electronic health record implementation,” “electronic health record use and quality of care,” “electronic health record implementation in the US,” “barriers to electronic health record implementation,” etc. We tried to gain information in many different perspectives such as how staff is affected and considering important factors such as financial difficulties, quality of care, overall issues and

barriers.
Each member searched and picked two articles that were in line with our topic and research goals. We each wrote a summary of all the important information regarding our respective articles. We shared the relevant information with each other and in order to do the actual review of literature we came up with themes, found similarities and differences between the articles. We made sure to consider the positives and negatives that arise with the implementation of electronic health records, as well as what kind of barrier usually occur in hospital settings. Our review of literature consists of twelve peer reviewed articles that were gathered from journals such as Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, Journal of Healthcare Management, Computers, Informatics, Nursing Journal, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, Health Services Research Journal, International Journal of Medical Informatics, and BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making.
Once the main portion of the review of literature was complete we focused on the findings regarding electronic health implementation we gathered throughout the process such as perspectives, barriers, processes of implementation, and outcomes. We also came up with concluding ideas to wrap the articles together into one complete thought. We reflected on electronic health record implementation and thought up a couple of suggestions that could make implementation of electronic health records a smoother transition in hospitals in order to avoid possible barriers such as reduced productivity and workflow, lack of support system, untrained staff, and decreased quality of patient care.