How IT can improve nursing coordination and communication

In the United States, health workers continue to experience high levels of stress and professional exhaustion, especially among nurses on the front line of health care provision. Professional exhaustion is a professional phenomenon that results from chronic stress in the workplace and is characterized by emotional exhaustion, negative feelings or the mental distance of his work, and a weak feeling of accomplishment at work.

Nurses who work on the front line of health care provision are often in high stress environments and do work that consists of complex tasks, heavy workloads and difficult times. These common challenges are factors that can lead to high levels of stress and professional exhaustion among nurses and can lead to low work satisfaction, negative feelings towards her career and the intention of leaving his job or his profession.

Over the past eight years, Debora Goetz Goldberg – who has a doctorate in health services, health and health sciences Allied – has spent a large part of his time looking for and writing on causes and solutions to combat professional exhaustion experienced by doctors, nurses and other health professionals.

She is an associate professor in the Department of Administration and Policies of the Health Department at the College of Public Health at George Mason University and affiliate teachers at the Center for Evidence-Based Health Health in the Department of Psychology.

Its expertise concerns the adoption and implementation of new technologies and innovative care provision processes. During her career, she has played in various roles in the health care industry, including first -line management in Acute Care hospitals, management consulting and as a university professor in health services.

IT news for health care Sitting with it to discuss how IT systems can improve coordination and communication for nurses, how the nurse for labor planning can offer flexibility for working hours and improve labor management, and how information technologies can support well-being at work.

Q. How can systems improve coordination and communication for nurses? And how can it help minimize professional exhaustion?

A. Progress of IT systems has produced digital tools that can help nurses in care coordination activities and communication between nurses and patients and between nurses and other health workers. These technologies include telemedicine platforms, secure messaging tools, collaborative task management tools and virtual meeting applications.

There are many available telemedicine platforms that offer nursing support to provide care for remote patients, which can increase communication with patients who are difficult to access and offer flexibility in work arrangements. Secure messaging is another computer tool that can help nurses to communicate.

An example of secure messaging is Paubox Email Suite, which is a messaging system that conforms to the HIPAA designed to communicate protected health information safely. Spruce Health and Zoom Healthcare are examples of systems that offer secure communication for patients and virtual meetings that can be used to communicate with patients, families and care teams.

There are also tools for managing collaborative tasks, some of which comply with Hippa, who can help nurses and managers to create an assignment and task times, project times or GANTT graphics, a sharing of files / documents, and a collaboration or a cat in real time. Some of these tools can provide integration with calendars, emails or electronic health files.

These IT systems have the potential to increase the effectiveness of the work carried out by nurses and to improve the care provided to patients, thus contributing to an increase in feelings of work satisfaction.

The successful adoption and implementation of new IT systems require a clear understanding of nursing information concerning useful characteristics and how these systems can be integrated transparently into their routine practice.

In a qualitative study, the nurses shared their prospects on the advantages of incorporating IT innovation into the workplace. The nurses have shared positive points of view on the advantages of IT systems that could provide tailor -made plans for patient care, improve communication, reduce workload and improve patient satisfaction.

For example, nurses have seen the potential to use IT systems entirely compatible with artificial intelligence for patient preliminary assessment and the use of communication systems to share audio / visual data with patients to improve communication between patients and nurses. Nurses also reported concerns about the implementation and use of IT, including confidentiality problems, patient consent, required software updates and technical difficulties, adequacy of digital literacy by nurses and patients, and challenges of workload management.

This is similar to what nurses and other health workers have reported in my research at George Mason University, in addition to highlighting the need for an computer system to have an easy -to -use interface and interoperability with other systems.

IT systems can help first -line nurses by improving care coordination and improving communication, thus offering the potential to simplify employment tasks and improve patient results. The design and implementation of new systems should involve nurses and other health workers whose labor would be influenced by new technology.

The implementation of new or modified IT systems should take into account the workload requirements for nurses and the technical skills and the required training. Future research should assess the influence of new computer systems on the workload of nurses and their stress and well-being.

Q. You say it for nursing work planning can offer flexibility for working hours and improve labor management. Please develop and talk about how it can help the nurse crisis.

A. The demanding working hours and the inability to make adequate ruptures during changes contribute to the professional exhaustion of nurses. In our research at George Mason University, we have found that the number of hours worked per week is associated with professional exhaustion among nurses and other health professionals. The association between the number of hours worked and professional exhaustion has been found in many studies, in all health professions.

There are many IT systems designed to support nursing planning that can help manage staff, quarter of work, overtime and compliance in hospitals and ambulatory environments. These systems could be used by managers to define a maximum number of hours worked per day or per week, plan sufficient time for breaks during work quarters that allow psychological detachment of work and promote more flexibility and choices of working hours for nurses.

Examples of health care planning systems include Kronos WorkForce Scheduler, Qgenda and Shiftwizard.

Q. Information technologies can support well-being at work. How can his role in these areas help reduce professional exhaustion?

A. There are more and more evidence that supports the use of specific IT tools focused on mindfulness and well-being to reduce stress and professional exhaustion among nurses and other health professionals. For example, a randomized controlled trial of a tailor -made burnout reduction program assisted by the AI ​​administered by the mobile application, the nurses’ healing space has found a significant reduction in the professional exhaustion scores compared to control groups.

In another randomized control trial carried out at Mayo Clinic, the researchers found a significant improvement in stress and emotional well-being in participants using an intervention based on resilience led by smartphones. At George Mason University, we are currently doing research that assesses the effectiveness of the first line of stresspal, an online behavioral health application, in the creation of psychological flexibility and the reduction of stress for nurses and other health professionals.

Other researchers assess the use of virtual reality technology to reduce stress and anxiety in health workers. An example of the use of virtual reality to support the health of behavior for front-line health workers is the quiet cinematographic-VR simulation of a quiet nature, which has led to significant stress reductions in participants.

These IT tools can help meet some of the work -related challenges that nurses are encountered. However, a complete solution is necessary which deals with individual, organizational and system factors that contribute to professional exhaustion. We need organizational commitment and local / national policies that support the health, security and well-being of nurses.

A global approach to combating professional exhaustion would include the recognition and support of leadership, occupational safety measures which include activities aimed at reducing violence and harassment in the workplace, participatory leadership approaches that include nurses in decisions that influence their work, their job redesign and / or changes in the working hours and mental health and well-being.

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