Meditech NUR module and OBVU

[bbnurse]

First let me say, I am NOT an information specialist...only a nurse.

Our hospital has been developing the Nursing module of Meditech. My unit was the pilot unit for the VS and I&O. We love it. We have written the Intervention dictionaries for Peds and Nursery and developed Admission assessments, reassessments, etc. That will not be going live house wide for some reason unknown to me.

In the interim, our OBVU system has been upgraded and we have potential to do Labor charting in it. The issues are how are you doing computerized charting in L&D if you have this ability?

Do you do only LD on the OBVU system? Can you safely place Meditech on the OBVU desktop and toggle between systems?

Where do you chart admissions and reassessments? What do you do about PP and Nursery if you chart L&D all in OBVU? Do you know of an interface?

What about the Forms package on OBVU? Is anyone using it? Does it work as fast as meditech?

If you can answer these questions based on your experience, it would be a great help to me. I have to make a logical proposal and I am not certain how to best accomplish a simple, non-duplicity charting system in the computer, based on these 2 systems. HELP!!

Thank you if you can help.

[rninformatics, DNP, RN]

Hi bbnuse,

First let me start out by correcting your intro sentence. There is no such thing as "just a nurse". You are a nurse and you have developed valuable clinical assessment and information handeling skills through your practice of nursing and your care of Peds, Nursery and L&Dpopulations. Your involvement in the piloting of the Nursing module coupled with your nursing experience has given you the ability to ask detailed questions related to design, analysis and implementation of a clinical information system. Your desire to improve your nursing practice and the delivery of patient care through the use of information technology make you a Nurse Informaticist albeit without the certification or degree.

Now, to your question. Before you try to reinvent the wheel can you find out why the Nursing assessments, reassessments and interventions are not going live or when they plan to go live?

Being an informed practitioner is part of your job. You have every right to know the above as your time and energy have been used to develop these tool. I hear your concerns about doing vs in one system and then documentation in another totally seperate system. If the two system now reside on the same PCs have you tried seeing if two seperate sessions(one in each system) can be open at the same time? Are both applications Windows based? I am assuming that OBVU is the name of your L & D system. Related to weither or not you can have two seperate applications on one pc, it depends on the processing power of the pc they are on and the licensing agreement your organization has with the OBVU vendor. True interfaces cost time and money to develop and are frequently cost probitive to an organization.

CCOW is the closest current technology that would allow you continuous access between two seperate applications without requiring two seperate log ins. I have no idea what its costs are, however. I would be happy to discuss this further with you off line. Please contact me at [email protected]