Concept Analysis: Electronic Health Record. Nursing Essay

Concept Analysis: Electronic Health Record.
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Introduction.
Many health facilities have adopted electronic health records (EHRs) as their primary information technology. Pharmacists have used the entity, nurses, physicians, physical therapists, and case managers for recording, documenting, and storing the health information of a patient. In consequence, healthcare practitioners can collect full and reliable information from one department or agency then share it with another through the same system and server. Notwithstanding the significance of EHRs in the healthcare industry, scholars have not yet developed its standard conceptual definition, especially in the field of professional nursing. This is because of the massive ambiguity that still exists in terms of its meaning since the 1990s during the initial introduction of the concept and all of its other ideas.
There have been significant changes in the name, structure, and content of EHRs, despite the sense that its role in enhancing health care. Furthermore, there has been a minimal focus on all the aspects of this complex in the nursing discipline. Though they have not been published, various analysts have provided several definitions of the concept. This paper serves to research on the concept of electronic health records with the view of clarifying and developing a solid understanding of the framework in different disciplines of the healthcare industry, particularly in professional nursing. Specific features of a concept are landed upon in concept analysis, and for professionals to create a reasonable theory, they should have an accurate operational definition of all the concepts related to the study. Therefore, the following eight steps have been employed in the document to analyze EHRs as a concept in nursing:
1 Selection of the concept
2 Determining the purpose of the analysis.
3 Identifying the uses of the concept.
4 Definition of the attributes of the concept
5 Construction of a model case.
6 Identifying antecedents.
7 Outlining the consequences of the concept.
8 Reflection on the relationship between the concept of the current nursing practice.
Uses of the Concept.
The analysis included reviewing a technical report by the International Organization for Standardization that refers to the basis of EHR as a repository of patient information and their health status stored in a computerized for easy access. Besides, the relevant term associated with EHR were retrieved from Science Direct, CINAHL, and EBSCOHost. Information collected from the libraries is journals and articles on health sciences, especially on the professions of health nursing, medicine, dentistry, toxicology, pharmaceutical science, veterinary science, and veterinary medicine, as well as pharmacology, among others (Lavin, Harper & Barr, 2015). Additional topics were on computer science. Specific keywords used in the research were electronic health record and nursing, automatic documentation of health information and electronic health records as a concept.
From the journal of nurse practitioners, Melanie defines electronic health records as a digital version of a paper chart for a patient (Melanie & Balestra, 2018). The author states that electronic health records are real-time, patient-oriented records that avail information for instant and secure access by authorized personnel. Still, according to an excerpt from a chapter of the article, EHR does not contain confidential medical and treatment information of a patient, but only the general knowledge that can be posted anywhere within a discipline without fear of stereotypes and conflicts. The system is developed to hold more information than the standard clinical data in the office of a provider. This means that the model contains a broader view of patient care, and that is why it is a vital concept to learn in this stage. Lastly, EHR, as a concept, is a crucial part of automated health service because it stores the medical history, diagnosis, treatment strategies and medications, dates of immunization, specific allergies, radiology and x-ray representations and laboratory tests and results (Watkins, Peltz-Steele & Steinbuch, 2017).
Lavin, Harper, and Barr define the concept as a documentation tool that produces data that is useful in the enhancement of a patient's safety, evaluation of the quality of the care provided and in the measurement of the needs of the staff (Lavin, Harper & Barr, 2015). Moreover, the writers state that although healthcare practitioners appreciate the concept so much for it maximizes efficiency within the department, they have indicated a significant number of dissatisfaction with its design and cumbersome electronic processes. Nevertheless, EHR allows access to evidence-based tools that doctors and nurses can use to make reliable decisions on several issues, including the patient's care. Another use of the concept as a material approach or solution to problems is that it automates and streamlines the workflow of the provider (Lærum , Ellingsen & Faxvaag, 2017). This is in line with the sense that the system is computer-based, and all of its functions are executed with a click of a button.
Definition of Attributes.
Attributes are the physical features of a concept. They appear repetitively. The help researchers distinguish the capacity of a specific phenomenon from another similar one. This segment of the paper discusses the analyzed characteristics of electronic health records. These attributes are that EHRs are user-friendly, work towards promoting and preserving the security of information, offers outstanding performance, and are structured (Walker & Avant, 2005).
1 User-friendliness.
Electronic health records are automatic. They are developed in a way that they take the actual instructions fed into it by a human operator then execute them accordingly. This is the user-friendliness feature (Walker & Avant, 2005). This makes the system secure and efficient to access, understand its results, and use it. The advancement characteristic of the program is that the design of the user interface should be improved to serve multiple operators. Moreover, feeding in data into the system should be simplified for further efficiency.
2 Preservation of Security.
Some elements of an electronic health record are storage of medical histories, treatment plans, nursing and caregiving, and other relevant information regarding the health of an individual (Shah et al., 2016). Additionally, it comprises the results of laboratory tests, crucial signs, and symptoms of potential disease and its forms of diagnosis. Information collected and stored in the electronic health record is protected, and its privacy is guaranteed. To gain access to the data, one requires to log into the system, which demands that they insert a username and password.
3 Provision of outstanding performance.
Electronic Health Records provide users with the required information due to its fastness in accessing, retrieving, transmitting, importing, and exporting data. Equally important, EHRs offer excellent performance in terms of its ability to be connected to other computers to allow the sharing of information and access from several disciplines (Walker & Avant, 2005). Also, this feature aids in ...