Module 1 assignment

Describe what is happening related to IT in your clinical area.

I hate to admit that when I first entered nursing we did all of our charting by hand with paper charting....YIKES! It was laborious and boring and it was difficult to go back through patient charts to find information related to what happened on day one, or results of a procedure. It was also easy to forget information that was vital to the patient, when we found time to chart.

I remember when our unit implemented computer charting. We all thought it was the worst expectation for nurses....how were we ever going to learn it all!? We were trained on Tandam and it actually resulted in better charting and time management.

I work for IHC and the diabetes clinic was using Clinical Workstation when I started working there. We have always been on the entry level of new computer technology. We have recently implemented the HELP2 Clinical Desktop. It was a bit overwhelming at first BUT...what a difference in information organization. We have had several training sessions with the computer experts and we now have access to so many applications for information retreival, EBM articles and drug information. We no longer have to write prescriptions by hand and we also have drug to drug, drug to condition alerts whenever we write for a new medication which decreases the chance of errors.

We have access to E-Resource, which includes Micromedex, UpToDate, PubMed, etc and is invaluable on a daily basis. We have access to image acquisition, Lab Order Entry and Hottext. This allows us to access information while we are with the patient and to discuss this with the patient. It also allows us to make better evidence-based decisions on the healthcare we provide.

We also have access to Message Log which allows us to be in contact with any of the patients providers that are based with Intermountain Healthcare. This has given us the ability to be in contact with other providers on a daily basis to coordinate care.

Recently, President Obama recognized Intermountain Healthcare as a model of care. It was said that "Much of the rest of the country tends to focus on the volumes of healthcare services they provide, because that is what the system rewards, rather than the care that's necessary to help the patient. In Intermountaion Healthcare and in Utah we focus on evidence-based medicine and we're more able to provide only the services our patients need"(Obama Singles Out Intermountain Healthcare as Model System). Much of this ability to provide only services that are needed by the patient is due, in great part, to our availability of informatics technology.

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