Acquisition of patient information from nurses by other health professionals under electronic medical record implementation.

Most electronic medical record (EMR) systems in Japan are equipped with nursing documentation functions. Electronic nursing records (ENRs) are much more accessible to doctors and paramedical staff than paper-based record systems. Face-to-face communication might be used less often to acquire patient information collected by nurses if EMR systems were effectively used. We conducted a questionnaire survey to investigate the methods used by other health professionals to acquire patient information collected by nurses under EMR implementation at two university hospitals. There were 153 responses, which showed that 51% of doctors and 16% of paramedical staff still often used face-to-face communication even though more than 70% of them often accessed the ENR. Only 35% of doctors and paramedical staff recognized that the EMR system helped reduce the time needed to acquire patient information; furthermore, 32% thought that using the EMR system to acquire patient information was bothersome. These results indicate that the operability of EMR systems is still insufficient for health professionals.