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Advantages And Disadvantages Of The EHR

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The EHR provides easy, accessible, complete medical information, providing that the information is entered correctly. Often, information that the patient cannot remember, for instance home medications or allergies, are saved within the EHR and can be reviewed with the patient, assisting the patient to remember the medication names; therefore, assisting the nurses with appropriate medication administration decisions. Another advantage of the EHR is the ability to save medical interactions, and then add upon the list of medical diagnoses as care is delivered. Many times, patients do not remember the details of treatment received in the past, such as diagnosis, but they can remember once the medical term is mentioned. Having information to assist the patient with remembering past medical conditions will improve care delivery and increase patient safety by enhancing the nurse’s knowledge of past medical problems. EHR documentation varies from system to system, and can enhance the quality of nursing care. As written previously, the organization can customize the EHR, to include safeguards for documentation. For example, the triage screen cannot be passed without documenting a completed abuse screening; when administering a cardiac medication, a prompt appears to enter the heart rate; or the allergy screen appears for review before the nurse can acknowledge an ordered medication. Becoming familiar with the system the organization is using, and understanding that a heart rate must be checked before administering certain cardiac medications, and reviewing a list of allergies before administering medications assists the nurse in high quality, safe care delivery. Safeguards within the system increase the quality of care, and decrease undesirable events. B1. Quality Improvement Recently, the facility that I work for used the HIS data to evaluate the times associated with all the patients who presented with cerebral vascular accident (CVA) symptoms. After the review, it was decided that patient care was hindered by the amount of time that lapsed before the computerized tomography (CT) scan reports were received through the picture archiving and communication system (PACS), and an extended time was noted waiting for the

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