Emergency Physician Perceptions of Electronic Health Record Usability and Safety.
- 2021
Available online through MWHC library: March 2005 - present
CONCLUSIONS: Usability shortcomings that spanned across hospitals and vendors may suggest a need for more applied research and improved design to resolve these issues. Shortcomings that are localized to a specific product or hospital may be due to customization and may be addressable by learning from other organizations. Copyright (c) 2021 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved. METHODS: Fifty-five emergency physicians from 4 different hospitals were interviewed. The interviews were qualitatively analyzed, and physician comments were aligned with a usability taxonomy to identify emerging themes by vendor and hospital. OBJECTIVES: Despite requirements for electronic health record (EHR) vendor usability testing, usability challenges persist, contributing to patient safety concerns. We sought to identify emergency physicians' perceived EHR usability and safety strengths and shortcomings across major EHR vendor products. RESULTS: Of the 194 comments about usability, the 3 most commonly discussed usability topics were Workflow Support (33.5% of comments), Visual Display (20.1%), and Data Entry (14.4%). Electronic health record usability strengths were centered on Visual Display, and the most common shortcoming was the lack of Workflow Support. Fourteen cross-hospital/cross-vendor themes, 6 vendor-specific themes, and 4 hospital-specific themes were identified.