A usability evaluation of an electronic health record system for nursing documentation used in the municipality healthcare services in Norway

Abstract

The paper presents a usability evaluation of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) of an Electronic Health Record System (EHR). The topic of interest was to explore the system's usability in the context of nursing process documentation. A cognitive walk through approach was used. The data were analyzed with content analysis and the results show that challenges identified were related to navigating and finding information in the system. Even though there were problems in progressing from one phase to another in nursing process documentation, the system represented some types of predictability and consistency in the functions. Education, training and support are needed to be able to use the EHR for nursing documentation. Mandating standardization regarding format, content and terminology to improve the EHR systems functionality regarding facilitate nursing process documentation is recommended. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.