The Relationship Between Electronic Nursing Care Reminders and Missed Nursing Care

The purpose of the study was to explore relationships between nurses' perceptions of the impact of health information technology on their clinical practice in the acute care setting, their use of electronic nursing care reminders, and episodes of missed nursing care. The study aims were accomplished with a descriptive design using adjusted correlations. A convenience sample (N = 165) of medical and/or surgical, intensive care, and intermediate care RNs working on acute care hospital units participated in the study. Nurses from 19 eligible nursing units were invited to participate. Adjusted relationships using hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated significant negative relationships between missed nursing care and nursing care reminders and perceptions of health information technology. The adjusted correlations support the hypotheses that there is a relationship between nursing care reminder usage and missed nursing care and a relationship between health information technology and missed nursing care. The relationships are negative, indicating that nurses who rate higher levels of reminder usage and health information technology have decreased reports of missed nursing care. The study found a significant relationship between nursing care reminders usage and decreased amounts of missed nursing care. The findings can be used in a variety of improvement endeavors, such as encouraging nurses to utilize nursing care reminders, aid information system designers when designing nursing care reminders, and assist healthcare organizations in assessing the impact of technology on nursing practice.