Study of Suitability of Computer Workstations Design for Nurses’ Work Content

The majority of published research about EMR systems regarding nurses and their clinical tasks have centered on their attitudes toward EMR systems, which have generally been positive and accepting. There is a lack of studies that would consider dimensions of clinical tasks, human factors, and available equipment to determine how nurses work with EMRs. The goal of this study was to investigate how suitable the design of computer workstations is in terms of hardware selection for nurses’ work content. This was a mixed-method study (focus groups and online survey) to collect data. The survey tool was distributed among 600 nurses in a rural hospital and a series of two-way, three-way chi-square and logistic regression analysis were conducted to investigate the correlation between the human factors aspects of the clinical tasks (work content) and nurses’ preference of computing device and location. The findings from 61 responses illustrated a significant correlation between cognitive and interaction design aspects and the preferred type of computer workstations. This means that better understanding of cognitive and interaction design aspects of clinical tasks by nurses as well as managers and computer software developers is critical in workstation design, resource allocation, better quality of care and patient safety.