Julia A. Greenawalt
Indiana University of Pennsylvania,USA USA
Title: Meaningful Use, Documentation of Nursing Care, and Lessons Learned When a System Goes Off-Line
Biography
Biography: Julia A. Greenawalt
Abstract
Teaching documentation skills and concepts to the emerging professional is a new challenge for nurse educators as the infusion of meaningful use is implemented within nursing's affiliating agencies. Discipline mandates and accreditation requirements expect the emerging professional to be current in technology and communication as one prepares to care for patients in contemporary times. This presentation will share how meaningful use has been incorporated into one obstetrical course in a baccalaureate nursing program. This is necessary for other disciplines to understand how and where meaningful use impacts their operations. In addition, we will discuss some of the current challenges as we go forward pulling from real life experiences of one nurse faculty member’s exposure to the infusion of meaningful use into course and practicum, events when meaningful use goes inactive and operations remain ongoing, and the actions taken to mitigate future safety and sentinel events. This experience illuminates the need for inter-professional on-going collaborative efforts to enhance patient safety from an informatics perspective. However, the best method of instruction for teaching learning to undergraduate nursing students as relates to electronic documentation remains unclear at this time. Current inquiry and future research into evidence-based practice are needed as preparation gears toward workforce ready graduates who will be skilled and adept at documentation using current technologies. Teaching skills for information systems, particularly the electronic health record, requires identification of challenges and obstacles, which can be surmounted if academe and corporate culture work in tandem.