Health Model: Adoption of e-health

My current role in Alberta differs a great deal from the typical or expected registered nurse role. This province, along with many other areas of the country, is rapidly moving towards electronic health. This process is complicated, intelligent, and requires a vast amount of development and man power to accomplish. This change is going to inevitably effect all areas of health, and this is where my current role plays a part. I am assisting with the great adjustment, providing technical and emotional support, and helping to further develop e-health to overall improve the health care we provide in this province.

I decided to search for a model that would reflect this dramatic change we are going through. The model that I chose to use discusses the behavioral affects of everyone involved in this innovative transformation. These include not only the technological changes, but the pressures managers and physicians feel, and psychological factors experienced by front line staff.

Figure 1. Behavioral model of adoptions and transitions towards e-health

The move towards e-health is being done for a very good reason. Some great examples are assisting with the efficiency of providing care, the ease of retrieving patient information, and having a shared database for research and data collection. Gathering the information from 500 paper charts would take a significantly longer amount of time than being able to access them all from one desktop!

With all these points laid out, it is important to also recognize the challenges and struggles that come with this technological evolution. Providing care to patients is a 24/7 job. Many health care providers develop comfortable habits and have a routine they thrive on. Change isn’t always desired. As the psychological point in the models identifies, e-health literacy and computer anxiety are huge barriers. More senior staff who did not grow up on computers have a greater chance of delayed adapting and higher anxieties. Computer illiteracy can consume the valuable time of a health care provider with slow documentation abilities, the struggle to find or access relevant information and overall troubleshooting. This could very directly affect the patient and the care they receive.

Managers receive a lot of complaints and frustrations from their staff regarding issues with the new technology and change, but many front-line staff members do not realize the pressures put on unit managers to implement these changes. For example, “Connect Care” is the current project in Alberta. Starting this November, every hospital unit, urgent care and clinic will be changing over the system called “Epic”. Every health care worker will be transitioned over to this system whether they currently use paper charting or have experience with some sort of electronic medical system. I anticipate this will cause stress for both on-floor and managerial staff.

It is important that these challenges and stressors have the appropriate education and support. I do believe that once the change is complete, and the e-health literacy has improved, health care provided in Alberta will be more thorough and efficient than ever. I look forward to the future and the continuing development of health care technologies.

References

Figure 1 Behavioral model of adoptions and transitions towards e-health. Reprinted from “Development of a techno-humanist model for e-health adoption of innovative technology” by Razmak, J., Bélanger, C. H., & Farhan, W. (2018), International Journal of Medical Informatics, 120, 62–76. Copyright 2018 by Elsevier.