Electronic health registers are tools used to collect and store patients’ electronic data. This information is collected in real-time to resolve problems associated with medical prescription errors and improve the quality of healthcare service patients receive in a medical institution (Wilson et al., 2021). Thus, this paper focuses on explaining how the introduction of electronic health registers in a healthcare organization can help reduce medical errors that may emerge out of the misdiagnosis of a patient. The paper is divided into various sections, and this includes a summary of the interview sections, the research questions, the Lewin Change Theory and its application in the Implementation of Electronic Health Registers in a healthcare setting, data findings, analysis of data findings, and a personal reflection of the findings. The conclusion of this paper is a summary of the primary issues raised in the writing.
Leadership Essay
Nurses and medical practitioners face various issues and problems when providing medical services. One of them is accessing and storing data belonging to the patients. The inability to accurately record and store patients’ information can lead to misdiagnosis, prescription, and medical errors (Wilson et al., 2021). The result is that the nurses, medical workers, and healthcare organizations will be vulnerable to lawsuits. Besides, a healthcare organization’s reputation will be at stake because patients might accuse the organization of providing low-quality medical services. Therefore, to resolve the problems of providing low-quality healthcare services to patients, misdiagnosis, and medical errors, there is a need to introduce technological innovations that can help accurately record healthcare data. But, to understand the extent of the problems on nursing floors and the impact of technology in addressing the problems, an interview was conducted, and below are the results.
Summary of Interviews
During the data collection process, several people were interviewed for information. These include nurses, doctors, health administrative officers, and health records and information officers. I choose these people because they have first-hand experience with issues on health and the challenges that medical practitioners have when it comes to diagnosing and treating patients, and this is due to inadequate information from the patients. In this regard, the ideas and information I sought from these healthcare practitioners were on how best to improve a healthcare organization to ensure that they reduce medical errors, misdiagnoses, and instances of low-quality healthcare services. From the results, one of the dominant issues that emerged is integrating technology in providing healthcare services. For instance, the respondents identified the need for healthcare organizations to integrate electronic health registers into their operations, making it easier for healthcare workers to collect real-time patient information and patient data.
Additionally, the electronic health registers would make it possible for healthcare workers to store crucial patient health history, diagnosis, medications, and health data. These can be used to develop a care plan to resolve the patient’s health problems. Finally, I realized that healthcare institutions that have integrated technology into their operations and organizations efficiently minimize medical errors and reduce hospital readmission rates. The other issue is the need for healthcare organizations to re-train their healthcare workers on using technological innovations to improve service delivery. A well-trained healthcare official will be motivated, resulting in quality care and reducing instances of high organizational labor turnover.
Research Question
To achieve the objectives of the study, there is a need to answer the following PICOT question: Does the use of electronic health registers (I) by nurses and medical practitioners (P) in comparison to the manual recording, storing, and taking of patient information (C), result in the reduction of medical errors and misdiagnosis (O), within six months of its implementation (T)?
From this research question, it is evident that the study intends to analyze the effect of electronic health registers in improving the quality of healthcare services patients receive in a clinical setting. The population of the study is nurses and medical practitioners, and the reason is that they are the ones responsible for diagnosing, treating, and taking care of the patients. The time frame of six months is reasonable because an intervention measure should be able to resolve the problem quickly.
Lewin’s Change Theory
This is a theoretical framework that is based on three primary elements, which are: unfreezing, changing, and refreezing. The process of unfreezing involves identifying the need for change and identifying policies and practices that can alter or influence changes in an organization (Tran & Gandolfi, 2020). For instance, in this case, the unfreezing process will involve the identification of the need for change because a healthcare organization is experiencing increased rates of medical errors and patients misdiagnosed, resulting in the provision of poor medical services.
The change process will entail the implementation of the changes, and this is integrating the electronic health registers within the operations of the nursing environment to help in the reduction of medical errors and misdiagnosis, and hence, increase the quality of medical services provided to the patients (Tran & Gandolfi, 2020). Finally, the refreezing stage is the final step and entails incorporating the change in the organizational culture of a healthcare organization. Figure 1 is an illustration of the Lewin Change Model and its adoption in a healthcare agency to resolve issues of poor quality services that emerge because of medical misdiagnosis and medical errors:
Figure 1: Lewin Theory and Introduction of Electronic Health Registers in an Organization
Data Findings
Tanwar, Parekh, & Evans (2020) explain that using electronic health registers can help minimize medical errors because of the ease of storing and accessing data. This aspect gained the support of Wilson et al. (2021), who assert that healthcare organizations that have introduced electronic health records and management have reduced serious medical errors by about 55%. But, Koleck et al. (2019) explain that the use of electronic health registers alone is not effective in reducing medical errors in an organization, and this is because they fail to detect 35% of the cases. This is an aspect supported by Rodriguez (2020), who asserts that in a simulation study of about 2,300 healthcare hospitals, the electronic health registers failed to detect about 33% of the medical errors suffered experienced by the organizations. In this regard, Li et al. (2020) believe in integrating electronic health registers in the healthcare systems of health organizations and ensuring health workers are trained in their implementation as a solution to the inability of the technology to detect some serious medical problems and issues.
Analysis of Data Findings
The findings show that electronic health registers and records can reduce medical errors in health settings. Healthcare organizations that implement electronic health records effectively identify medical errors and reduce misdiagnosis and inaccurate prescription of drugs. This, in turn, improves the quality of healthcare service that a medical organization provides to patients.
Personal Reflection of Findings
The information obtained helps to answer the research question. That is, it confirms that electronic health registers can help improve the quality of healthcare service an organization provides to its patients. The data collected could transform into useful information because it helps identify the inadequacies of the electronic health registers and strategies for improving them. Thus, the knowledge obtained can help nurse leaders always ensure they rely on accurate, real-time, and up-to-date information on the patient. Thus, the information obtained from the study can help influence policy changes in the sense that nurse leaders can advocate for the implementation of electronic health registers and records in medical institutions.
Conclusion
In conclusion, electronic health registers are an effective tool for reducing medical errors in healthcare organizations. They can help in the accurate diagnosis of diseases, resulting in high rates of patient satisfaction. The Lewin Change Theory can better help explain the strategies to initiate the change process in a healthcare organization. It is based on the principles of unfreezing, change, and refreezing.
References
Koleck, T. A., Dreisbach, C., Bourne, P. E., & Bakken, S. (2019). Natural language processing of symptoms documented in free-text narratives of electronic health records: a systematic review. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 26(4), 364-379.
Li, Y., Rao, S., Solares, J. R. A., Hassaine, A., Ramakrishnan, R., Canoy, D., … & Salimi-Khorshidi, G. (2020). BEHRT: transformer for electronic health records. Scientific reports, 10(1), 7155.
Rodriguez, A. (2020, June 2). Electronic health records are supposed to reduce medical errors in hospitals, but they fail to detect up to 33%, the study says. USA TODAY. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/06/02/electronic-medical-records-fail-pick-up-33-errors-study-says/5307917002/
Tanwar, S., Parekh, K., & Evans, R. (2020). Blockchain-based electronic healthcare record system for healthcare 4.0 applications. Journal of Information Security and Applications, 50, 102407.
Tran, T. T., & Gandolfi, F. (2020). Implementing Lewin’s change theory for institutional improvements: A Vietnamese case study. Journal of Management Research, 20(4), 199-210.
Wilson, F. P., Martin, M., Yamamoto, Y., Partridge, C., Moreira, E., Arora, T., … & Ugwuowo, U. (2021). Electronic health record alerts for acute kidney injury: multicenter, randomized clinical trial. Bmj, 372.
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