Analysis of two diverse nursing records applications: Mixed methods approach
Article Category: Research Article
Published Online: Jun 28, 2022
Page range: 137 - 144
Received: Jul 09, 2021
Accepted: Apr 04, 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/sjph-2022-0019
Keywords
© 2022 National Institute of Public Health, Slovenia, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.
Introduction
Poor adoption of electronic health records among healthcare workers can diminish their impact. Healthcare informatics solutions development should diligently acknowledge end-user needs. This study compares a user experience and perceived quality of the nursing process integration in two different applications for electronic documentation of the nursing care plan. Both applications were designed and tested in Slovenia.
Methods
In the first phase, final year undergraduate nursing students were recruited (n=73) and randomly assigned into two groups. Each group used one of the applications for a duration of five hours. A survey among students was conducted. In the second phase, additional students were recruited (n=40) and invited to participate in qualitative analysis of the unfavourably rated application.
Results
The modern, visually improved application was favourably rated by students in terms of all aspects of application usability. However, students reported a significant number of inadequacies regarding the nursing process methodology integration. On the contrary, the students using the poorly rated and visually outdated application reported no such concerns. Qualitative analysis of student reflections identified additional positive features of software design that were not detected in survey results analysis.
Conclusion
This study showed that a user-centred approach can be used to compare diverse electronic solutions. Detected discrepancies in findings using qualitative and quantitative analysis show the importance of integrating diverse research approaches for adequate evaluation of software solutions. Furthermore, this study design promotes empowerment of healthcare workers to participate in the development and critical evaluations of software solutions.