Our organization spends considerable time and effort training and onboarding inpatient nurses for our electronic medical record (EMR). Nurses average approximately eight hours of EMR training for system functionality that covers fundamental workflows such as patient admission, shift duties, and patient discharge. Despite the efforts made for staff nurses, nurse leaders have not had their own training despite their unique needs. In fact, the evidence suggests that nurse managers lack initial and ongoing training needed to perform their job duties.1

Onboarding managers and charge nurses are not typically responsible for direct patient care, yet they should still know staff nurse workflows in the event they may need to cover. From a leadership perspective, having system knowledge to understand unit metrics, revenue, patient throughput, and making staff assignments is essential. The reporting features of the EMR can be used to ensure that nurses are meeting required documentation and compliance with orders as dictated by organizational policy and regulatory bodies, such as The Joint Commission. The ability to track nurse-sensitive quality indicators using reporting features of the EMR is helpful to see trends on the unit and subsequently intervene as appropriate.

In January 2020, we will be piloting an EMR training class specifically for nurse managers. The pilot will include approximately 15-20 nurses from select units. At the conclusion of training, a course evaluation will be provided to these nurses to determine course effectiveness and satisfaction. Using metrics provided from our EMR vendor, we will then be able to track nurse leaders with their adoption of reporting features and other tools that enhance efficiency.

Our hope is to be able to educate these leaders to be able to better manage staff and monitor their units for potential patient safety risks. We wish to present via poster the outcomes of our pilot and lessons learned along the way.

References
1. Soriano, R., Siegel, E., Kim, T., Catz, S. Nurse Managers’ Experiences with Electronic health Records in Quality Monitoring. 2019, Nursing Administration Quarterly, 43(3), 222-229.

Elizabeth Campbell-Smit BSN, RN

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