Leadership Vision: To Have EHR at 90% of Healthcare Facilities in the US by 2015 - Research Paper Example

There is a revolution in the healthcare facilities in the United States and around the world especially in maintaining records. Today medical records do not need paper and pen, but a computer where the entire medical history of a person can be stored from birth till death. Though the adaptation of this technology is incorporated into the healthcare facilities, there is a need to train the healthcare faculty especially the nursing community to use these technologies. My vision in nursing leadership is the use of technology especially Electronic Health Records (EHR) by the year 2015 and the healthcare sector in the US can show tremendous growth. The efforts to achieve this goal need to be worked out and the nursing community plays a major role in achieving this goal.

At this point of time, it becomes essential to understand the terms Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Electronic Patient Record (EPR). “EPR refers to a documentation of periodic care, held by a single provider concerning a single person and is patient-centered” (Martin, et al., 2008), while EHR refers to the fully incorporated documentation of the patient’s whole medical past and involve the electronic collection of patient’s health and health care – from birth to death. In order to have change in the health sector the EHR needs to be incorporated into nursing practice in education and health care systems. EHR merge information from diverse care settings held in different systems and in some cases aggregates the information and displays them as a single record. Future patient record systems must support patients’ healthcare, assist to advance its value, have an impact to get better efficiency of healthcare personnel, and reduce expenditure.

Achieving this goal is possible with transformational leadership for new nurses as it encourages change and there is a need for the dynamic healthcare system of the 21st century. It may be noted that the lack of proper leadership has increased and influenced the shortage of nurses. The shortage of nursing staff is a major problem faced by the healthcare industry in the United States. This not only increases the stress on the existing staff but also leads to problems such as medication errors, diagnostic errors, health challenges, job burnout, and dissatisfaction. This in turn compromises patient safety. Computerization and information technologies are in turn going to improve the nursing practice as well as aid in patient education. It may also help to ease the stress on the existing staff, reduce medication errors and increase retention.

Nursing education is also using this advanced technology to train the new nurses and is encouraging the use of mobile computers in hospital settings. Nurses being the patient educator, the use of advanced technology can help them to attain success in this field. The use of these technologies helps in storing vast amounts of data efficiently. Today, in most of the hospitals the records have less information, and most of it is stored in computers which is a totally different situation from the 80s and 90s. It is often seen nurses in the hospital work with mobile computers in the patients’ rooms. Therefore, recent years have seen several advancements using the latest technologies.

Among the healthcare sector, there is an obvious competition to provide customers with the best value. According to the existing estimates, approximately 15% of GDP is spent on healthcare alone in the United States, which is the highest in the world (WHO, 2006). It is quite evident that the use of computer and information technologies in healthcare increase at a faster rate and this is, in turn, going to improve nursing education as well as practice. The use of a computerized charting system can help the nurses in managing the data.

It is only with effective nursing leadership that nursing practice and effective health care policies can be shaped and influenced in the future (Antrobus and Kitson, 1999). Researchers have identified the need for transformational leadership in the healthcare industry. Transformational leadership is especially helpful for new nurses and is an encouragement for them as this leadership helps to bring about change that fits into the exceptionally dynamic system of healthcare. In fact, it can be noted that it is easy for new nurses to identify and compare the new and old policies, procedures, and case histories and provide suggestions of improvement with the use of technology such as EHR. Cafarelli and Brown (1998

The outcome of this achievement can result in advantages such as patients having more options and less waiting time, the physician saving time and can instantly access data on past records, hence making sure safe, competent, reliable, and incessant healthcare for the patients. Health organizations save time and funds by streamlining the system, avoiding duplicate instruction, and stopping of pilferage of medicine.