Nurse Informaticians Report Low Satisfaction and Multi-level Concerns with Electronic Health Records: Results from an International Survey.

TLDR

The study aims to qualitatively analyze nurses’ satisfaction and issues with current EHR systems using data from one of the largest international nursing informatics surveys. The authors conducted a qualitative content analysis of survey responses from 469 nurses across 45 countries. Participants reported low satisfaction with nursing functionality in EHRs, with two‑thirds expressing concerns that highlighted system‑level problems such as poor usability and interoperability, user‑task failures, and environmental barriers, prompting a call for educators, managers, and policymakers to address these issues.

Abstract

This study presents a qualitative content analysis of nurses' satisfaction and issues with current electronic health record (EHR) systems, as reflected in one of the largest international surveys of nursing informatics. Study participants from 45 countries (n=469) ranked their satisfaction with the current state of nursing functionality in EHRs as relatively low. Two-thirds of the participants (n=283) provided disconcerting comments when explaining their low satisfaction rankings. More than one half of the comments identified issues at the system level (e.g., poor system usability; non-integrated systems and poor interoperability; lack of standards; and limited functionality/missing components), followed by user-task issues (e.g., failure of systems to meet nursing clinical needs; non nursing-specific systems) and environment issues (e.g., low prevalence of EHRs; lack of user training). The study results call for the attention of international stakeholders (educators, managers, policy makers) to improve the current issues with EHRs from a nursing perspective.