Introduction
Healthcare quality depends on the coherent work of professionals, equipment operability, and their influence on one another. The researchers have been investigating the idea of applying the principle of interoperability to healthcare to boost health outcomes and facilitate the working process. Interoperability stands for the seamless transfer of data between the computer and hardware.
It is considered a primary mechanism each hospital should adopt to provide efficient services. Specifically, patient data is so massive that it cannot be stored in cloud systems in the open network. Organizations had better install their software to launch a large amount of information without the fear of leakage. This paper aims to address the case study and suggest an implementation plan.
Case Overview
The case study presents the topic of creating electronic health records (EHRs) for each patient and letting everyone access them without restraints. It will be provided as a personal health record with private health information. The nurse practitioner (NP) working in a family practice wants to advocate for merging health and personal records so that individuals can easily retrieve necessary data. The hospital where she works is fully electronic, and she is attempting to create a linking form by installing new software. The following part of the paper will review the possible plan to make a change.
Problem Background
EHRs have become the most remarkable breakthrough in the medical field since they have alleviated many processes related to patient data retrieval. In fact, an electronic medical record is the same set of data as a paper one, but these data are more structured and brought to uniform federal and regional standards (Chipps et al., 2020). This makes it possible to use them in various information systems synthesized with the subsystem of regulatory and reference information management. The main advantage of an electronic medical card over a paper version is that the patient has a single one, and it is accessible from anywhere in the region (Chipps et al., 2020). On the contrary, the patient has a lot of medical records in the paper version of each medical organization in which they received medical care.
The ability of a doctor to have timely access to complete patient health data is the most significant advantage of electronic medical records in terms of the quality of medical services. In addition, patients have access to a personal account to receive more prompt information about the results of laboratory tests and medical services provided to them and can use this information in any other clinics in the country (Chipps et al., 2020). However, when it comes to implementing such systems, there are several issues that will be described in the following section.
Key Issues
The primary issue concerns the safety of information, as the spread of personal data may be dangerous for the hospital. Confidentiality is the central principle of such systems, and data leakage is detrimental. Information can only be accessed by the stakeholders – hospital representatives when it is necessary or upon the request of a patient. However, allowing patients to retrieve personal data by themselves is likely to cause the aforementioned issue.
The other significant impediment is that the nurse practitioner working in family practice may need to be more qualified for advocating. Even though they have an absolute right to advocate for changes, their attempts may go unnoticed, bringing no result (Rich & Butts, 2022).
Therefore, it is better to form a coalition of nurses to promote the importance of altering the situation. The role of nurses is growing annually since this profession is one of the most awarded in healthcare (Chipps et al., 2020). It signifies that they are capable of making changes, yet the major impediment is the need for more support. Primarily, it refers to funding as policy implementation is costly, as well as developmental initiatives. This means that hospitals are unwilling to take risks and prefer not to invest money in projects proposed by nurses.
What is more, the majority of NPs need to be more qualified to take actual actions and advocate for policy initiation. One must obtain a degree allowing for proposing amendments in accordance with specific criteria established by the legislation. Moreover, a professional should have enough experience in researching a concrete issue.
In the presented case, there is a problem with personal health records provided to the patients. It is complex work demanding time, financial, and educational resources to ensure the success of the project (Rich & Butts, 2022). Hence, in the plan, I would like to address such issues as ensuring patient safety, the right to advocacy, and the allocation of resources.
Main Components
The primary component of a plan would be setting a goal. In the selected case, the objective is to provide patients with personal health records. Having a precise goal alleviates the process of breaking it down into tasks and seeing visible results (Shawn, 2020). However, this component is not enough to make a change as it is not propped by actions. This means that the following aspect is investigating the problem and informing others of the importance of introducing systems that allow patients to view personal health data.
The next component would be gathering a group of nurses who support the same idea and initiate a coalition to promote the vitality of the problem. When working together, professionals are more successful at achieving their goals because each individual makes a tangible contribution. It is possible to attract nurse informaticists and registered nurses (Mortell, 2020). These specialists can research the efficacy of the proposed policy and collaborate with those responsible for the hospital’s electronic systems.
Resources is the major aspect in implementing a new policy. These can come in various forms – education, money, time, and others. Financial help is the most significant realization element as it enables acquire new equipment, install new systems, and attract new professionals (Shawn, 2020). Yet nurses demand different qualifications to ensure smooth policy elaboration; as a result, education is a resource to be primarily obtained.
Change Theory
Kurt Lewin proposed the most common change theory in nursing. The three-stage change model describes the current state as the status quo. It represents the process of change, then begins with the proposed change, and then evolves to the desired future state. According to Lewin, changes in organizations can go through three main stages: unfreezing, changing, and refreezing (Crosby, 2020). This model is beneficial in case study applications. Refreezing allows a nurse to engage the stakeholders in the process and trace the changes.
The organization must recognize the new reality, break with the past, and recognize that the old way of doing things is no longer acceptable. It will be straightforward for an organization to adopt a new vision of the future once it separates itself from the structures and management methods that no longer work and that it will seek to break (Coghlan, 2020). Change — indicates the direction of changes and implements changes so that participants develop new views and behaviors.
The organization creates and owns a vision of the future and combines the steps necessary to achieve this goal. One of the first steps in organizing change is to unite the entire organization within a single vision. This vision not only includes some statement of its mission, philosophy, and strategic goals but also aims to very clearly outline how the organization should ideally look in the future (Coghlan, 2020). As new approaches, methods, and policies are used to change the company, they need to be “frozen” or strengthened (Crosby, 2020). Re-freezing stabilizes the organization in a new equilibrium, ensuring that the refreezing of work does not change easily and reinforces the new behavior underlying the changes. Overall, this theory is most suitable for nursing initiatives since it promotes advocacy in a way that the organization recognizes the needed changes.
Conclusion
In summary, policy change demands many resources that are propped up by a careful implementation plan. Electronic health records (EHRs) are the advancement a nurse practitioner in the case study focuses on. Specifically, the aim is to provide access to patient personal health records. The major components of the proposed plan are setting a specific and measurable goal, gathering a coalition of nurses, and allocating finances to the necessities. Lewin’s theory of change consists of three components that will be suitable to attain an objective. In general, the plan is likely to be realized in case the nurse practitioner expresses a strong will toward its implementation.
References
Chipps, E., Tucker, S., Labardee, R., Thomas, B., Weber, M., Gallagher-Ford, L., & Melnyk, B. M. (2020). The impact of the electronic health record on moving new evidence-based nursing practices forward. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, 17(2), 136–143. Web.
Coghlan, D. (2020). Edgar Schein on change: Insights into the creation of a model. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 57. Web.
Crosby, G. (2020). Planned change: Why Kurt Lewin’s social science is still best practice for business results, change management, and human progress. Taylor & Francis.
Mortell, M. (2020). A theory for patient advocacy: An Islamic nursing model. Nova Medicine & Health.
Rich, K. L., & Butts, J. B. (2022). Nursing ethics: Across the curriculum and into practice. Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Shawn, P. (2020). Nursing and EHRs. American Journal of Nursing, 120(2), 10. Web.
