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 Today in Health it, the story is how much of nurse burnout is due to the EHR. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in Health IT a channel dedicated to keeping Health IT staff current and engaged today, no sponsor. Just wanna make you aware of a service we offer.

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Nurses give EHR usability an F in a new study. This is a healthcare IT news story, and let me give you a couple of excerpts here. In nurses give EHR usability and F in a new study. The report also finds that poor electronic health record user experience is associated with nurse burnout. A study published this week in the Journal of American Medical Informatics Association found that more favorable electronic health record usability scores are associated with lower odds of burnout, and those usability scores have tanked.

Wrote the researchers. It's interesting. Why it matters. DHR usability has been found to be a source of frustration for physicians, but less is known about perceived usability among nurses. The study team comprised of researchers from Yale School of Medicine and Mayo Clinic, university of Virginia School of Nursing, and the American Nurse Association and the Stanford School of Medicine sought to change that.

Researchers noted that nursing is the healthcare profession with the largest workforce, meaning high burnout rates. Are significant and troubling. Indeed burnout has been associated with lower job performance among nurses, lower patient satisfaction, leaving patient care tasks undone or incomplete, and poor patient outcomes, including high mortality rates in addition to lower job satisfaction and higher rates of attrition.

To measure perceived usability, researchers used an industry standard system usability scale and ask respondents. To an online survey to answer 10 questions, and they go through the methodology and the scores. Hey, it's bad. It's an F rating and that's not good. The low marginal acceptability of nursing EHR usability scores reported here.

Emphasize the importance of improving EHR. Usability from the nursing perspective. Wrote the researchers. Here's the larger trend. Although burnout is undoubtedly an issue for clinicians throughout the country, especially during the pandemic, the cause remains somewhat murky. Previous reports have found that EHRs aren't a major factor in nurse burnout, although some practices aimed at improving usability have been found to reduce it indeed.

Healthcare IT News reported on it. Unfortunately, it has been cited multiple times as a reason for nurse burnout. Said. rn, a critical care nurse in New Jersey system, Virtu Health to HIT N's, bill Sowicki in November. Alright, so that's the story. And as you know, we like to talk about why does this matter?

What is the so what on this article, and I know I posed the question, I know the article posed the question, but the question really doesn't matter. There may or may not be a correlation between the EHR usability and nurse burnout, but the fact remains, the usability rating is an f. So if it's correlated, then it's even more important.

If it's not correlated, it still doesn't matter. If not, it's correlated. It's an f. We have to do something about that. So what can we do about that? I just jotted down a few notes here. Seek out the arch collaborative. People want to have a say in the build. This is some of the things I've learned from the arch collaborative.

People wanna have a say in the build. If nurses aren't at the table in the build, that's a problem. They want to be able to customize their environment. If you're not providing a way for them to customize the EHR environment to their workflows, to their way of trying to go about their business on a daily basis, then

That needs to be a, a priority. They want to be able to customize their environment. They need proper training. So that's, you know, the arch collaborative has some key tenants that they drive home, and those are some of those, and there's a additional tenants as well. You have to include nurses in the development of the workflows.

You have to include them in governance period. If nurses aren't at the table, that is a huge mistake and it's something that needs to be rectified pretty quickly. The third thing I would say is utilize the tools and analytics to determine best practices. We were able to, and, and a lot of the EHRs have this built in now where you're able to look at it and say, okay.

These people are using the EHR effectively, they're able to get in and out, get the workflows done very quickly. Why is that? What do they have? How have they customized the environment? And you're able to take those best practices and then take them out to others, and you're also able to identify those who are struggling with the use of the system.

That is data that has to be looked at. Constantly it should be looked at on really a weekly basis. Identify those who are struggling with the use of the system and figure out a way to do the elbow support that's required to bring those people along. And then the final thing I just put here is ask them, right if, if you know that your people are struggling, ask them what would make it better.

Why are you struggling? What are the areas it, it could be something as simple as the printers aren't located in the right place. The computers aren't located in the right place. You might think it's a big old EHR. We have to reprogram it kind of thing, where it's something simple. Ask them, find out what it is.

It may be a build, but it might be something simple. There are more ways to make the system better for nurses, but all of them start with intentionality. Make it a priority to make the system work for the nurses. Fund that priority, staff that priority, and measure that priority. Pretty basic stuff, right?

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