Computer system and informatics nurse rant!

I would ask them what they mean by any citicism will not be tolerated and how they plan to enforce a rule that would violate freedom of speech laws.

This is the time to nod... smile... and document.

People are frustrated with the system! They vent. It is a learning curve. Folks were read the riot act by manager. It is causing an increased amount of time to complete tasks as people learn the system. Is that a surprise? Improper documentation will not be tolerated. Great...but what is proper documentation? That seems to change week to week. Informatics nurse has proclaimed that people are just stupid and negative if they can't work with the system. A complaint from that side is ok. It could not possibly be her teaching methods. She is very arrogant. I guess that is a little hard to take. She has only 2-3 years of nursing experience. I have done education in the past and realize that sometimes what you have done to tech something simply doesn't work. There is no entertaining the idea that perhaps she needs to re-educate and perhaps use another approach. Staff educator on this unit is "clueless" about the system and of no help at all.

Maybe the informatics nurse and manager need to be educated on the basics of adult education principles, they may not realize that using adult teaching strategies will result in successful implementation of the system. Maybe try explaining to both the manager and informatics nurse, that you want the system to be implemented successfully but you know that there is plenty of resarch that shows adults need to be taught in the style they can best learn from, visual, auditory, tactile or reflective. Adults need to hear, see and do a new skill, at least seven times, so they will have to repeat, repeat, repeat until everyone gets it.

I would let the manager and informatics nurse know that I want to move forward with implementaing the system but at this point, a barrier is the lack of respect that was shown to the employees when the informatics nurse proclaimed people are just stupid or negative if they can't work the system. If the employer wants the nurses to learn effectively, they need to treat them with respect. To move forward, I would recommend sharing an article with everyone involved, Planning for Success: An Evidence-Informed Approach to Preparing Nurses for an Electronic Patient Record. A Review of the Literature | CJNI Journal maybe if everyone recognizes there are effective ways to teach and learn the new system, there will be less stress and better adaptation.

My guess is they aren't empowered to make any changes, so it wouldn't do any good to complain anyway. The EHRs are all imperfect, but we are all going to have to learn to live with them. If you have ideas for improvements to the software you should make a note of them and the developer can make the changes you need to make the day go smoother, but those ideas will have to be presented constructively if you really want anything done. You should also have a "Super User" on your unit who knows the system backwards and forwards and is available for assistance. Maybe that could be you! :)

What if you take any obvious screen shots of things that don't work? How can they argue that? Are they willing to have a monthly meeting/taskforce with a group of people to troubleshoot and improve?

Even if there isn't much that can be done about the current software, it helps people release their frustration if their complaints are heard. The informatics educator will get better results, if they listen to the employees' personal experiences with learning the system, acknowledges the learner's feelings and asks the learner what they (the informatics educator) can do to help make the learning curve easier.

Agree with taking a screen shot of things that don't work and emailing it to the educator or IT staff.

I would ask them what they mean by any citicism will not be tolerated and how they plan to enforce a rule that would violate freedom of speech laws.

Unfortunately there is not a whole lot of freedom of speech in the workplace and they can create any stupid rules they want to about what you can and cannot say about the computer system.

It it, however, pretty stupid on the part of the NM and the informatics nurse to not allow any criticism. How do they expect to improve the system if they are unwilling to hear anything about how the system is failing nurses and patients? Anyway, we can all talk until we are blue in the face(s) about how it it silly to not allow criticism of the system, but I think it is a good idea to find out exactly what criticsms of the system they will hear and in what form they want those criticisms (on paper, on email, in a specific 'criticsm" form ) and that way you can hopefully contribute to some positive changes in the system.