A QUALITATIVE DESCRIPTIVE STUDY EXPLORING ASSOCIATE DEGREE NURSING FACULTY’S EXPERIENCES TEACHING ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORD SYSTEMS USE

Abstract

There has been a persistent call for nursing education to prepare students to practice safely and competently in the technology-rich, information-laden healthcare system. The growth of the national health information infrastructure, built on an expanding foundation of interconnected electronic health record systems (EHRS), continues to change the healthcare environment in which nurses and nursing students practice. Nursing stakeholders are influencing nursing education to integrate informatics competencies, including the use of EHRS, into curricula. Reports from the literature show that nursing faculty face many challenges, including the lack of sufficient education or experience, to teach EHRS use and broader informatics concepts. Little is known about associate degree nursing (ADN) faculty’s preparedness to teach EHRS use. This qualitative descriptive study explored the lived experiences, perspectives, challenges, and teaching strategies of ADN faculty related to teaching EHRS use to pre-licensure nursing students. Faculty who teach EHRS use were recruited from a Council of Associate Degree Nursing in New York State Directors’ meeting and faculty development conference. Data collection tools included a brief qualitative survey and an interview guide that facilitated discussion of teaching EHRS use in diverse settings. An immersive approach with an iterative, inductive process was used for concurrent data collection and analysis. The two major categories that emerged from the study were Facing Challenges and Building Successes. This study found that ADN faculty faced formidable challenges around teaching EHRS use. Most pressing were limitations to clinical EHRS access. Faculty stressed the need for students and faculty to have deliberate opportunities to practice using EHRS to gain familiarity, comfort and expertise. Faculty strove to adapt to the barriers by creatively managing students, time, and activities across academic and clinical settings. Their goals for students included using EHRS in the process of forming professional nurses, contributing to their development as mindful, ethical students proficient in using EHRS with patients. Some successes in teaching EHRS use leveraged resources, including using Academic EHRS (AEHRS) and partnering with clinical facilities to use training versions of their EHRS, and employed diverse teaching strategies, including enhancing simulation activities by integrating AEHRS and clinical decision support tools. Implications and recommendations for action and future research are elaborated.