Vendor Survey Finds Nurses Care About IT
IT firm CDW Healthcare ran an online survey of 559 nurses working in a wide range of settings, including large hospitals/medical centers, clinics/physician offices, long-term care facilities, home care, visiting nursing associations, public health organizations, insurance companies, and corporations. A strong majority of respondents thought IT “has the potential to improve the quality of patient care” with 44 percent of them indicating they spend at least three hours a day using IT in various ways, from email (69%) to electronic medical records (60%) to CPOE (50%). Nearly 90 percent of respondents work on desktop systems and 21 percent use notebooks. Only nine percent use a handheld device and three percent use a tablet PC.
Nurses said they took into account the IT savvy of organizations they considered working for. 55 percent also showed a preference to receive more IT training to help them do their job. Finally, nurses are more likely to be consulted in the IT selection and/or implementation process than doctors, though not all healthcare organizations involve nurses at that stage. Thirty-six percent of survey respondents indicated that nurse managers and/or staff nurses are involved in the selection and/or implementation process compared to 14 percent who indicated physicians are consulted.
September 7, 2006 Related topics: IT & software