1. An Organization's Documentation Burden Reduction Initiative: A Quality Improvement Project.
- Author
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Donohue-Ryan, Mary Ann, Peleg, Natalie A., Fochesto, Denise, and Kowalski, Mildred Ortu
- Subjects
PSYCHOLOGICAL burnout ,MEDICAL quality control ,NURSING ,HEALTH services accessibility ,PROFESSIONAL employee training ,PATIENTS ,MEDICAL care ,PATIENT-centered care ,PSYCHOLOGY of nurses ,DOCUMENTATION ,MEDICAL protocols ,HOSPITAL admission & discharge ,NURSING practice ,QUALITY assurance ,JOB satisfaction ,NURSING research ,ELECTRONIC health records ,PATIENT care ,NURSES' associations ,HEALTH self-care ,DIFFUSION of innovations - Abstract
With the advent of technology, documentation activities have exponentially demanded more time of the nurse whenever a new piece of documentation gains entry into the electronic health record (EHR). The result is increased burden, consuming 28.3% of a nurse's shift in one study (Roumeliotis et al., 2018) and 21.4% in another (Schenk et al., 2018). Comparing nationally established benchmarks of time spent in documentation tasks at one New Jersey health system led a team of nurse leaders to establish a workgroup to reduce documentation burden and restore nurses' time for patient care as well as self-care activities. Based upon the principles of shared governance, the Documentation Burden Reduction Workgroup (DBRW), consisting of frontline clinical nurses who analyzed key areas of opportunity to eliminate redundancies and avoid documentation "creep," which is the overgrowth of flowsheets and other time-consuming electronic tools. Since the initiation of the DBRW project, based upon SQUIRE 2.0 Guidelines (Ogrinc et al., 2016), a 27% reduction in documentation has been achieved in admission assessment alone, with a reduction of approximately 1 million clicks and a removal of 89 rows from the head-to-toe assessment. Other outcomes, such as nurse satisfaction, missed care opportunities, ease of use, and impact upon patient-centered quality outcome data, are intended for reporting at a future date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2023
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