The whole healthcare industry and medical practices, in general, take care of the wellness and satisfaction of the physicians working with them, which is a good step, since physicians are the backbone of the whole healthcare facility. Not caring about physician wellness can have a negative impact on the practice. But in all of this hustle, nurses are often overlooked. We, as a community, need to care about the burden nurses face during their career and work on reducing that as well.
In practical situations, there is a lot of interruption and shifting of either operational tasks or Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Software related work within a practice, which causes a lot of stress among the staff. Research shows that nurses are the most adaptive towards their work environment as compared to any other staff within a clinic. But this does not mean that they are immune to burnout.
Stressed out nurses can lead to dissatisfied patients, which can eventually develop a bad image for your medical practice. In honor of the Nurses’ Week, EMRFinder brings you a list of steps you could take to increase the satisfaction and motivation level of Nurses.
Optimized EHR Software
According to studies, nurses are twice as likely to be satisfied with their jobs when the Electronic Health Records (EHR) Software or the Practice Management (PM) Suite being used is optimized according to their needs and contains features relevant to their workflow. This saves them the hassle of making extra efforts to understand the functionalities of the EHR System in use since everything is already in line with their routines.
Enhanced Usability
The usability of the EMR Software whether for the patients via a Patient Portal or for the nurses themselves needs to be perfect in order to reduce the stress levels. For instance, when Patient Scheduling and Appointment Reminders are working perfectly fine, it automatically reduces the workload for the staff including the nurses.
Software Training
Nurses are often overlooked during the training sessions of a new EMR Software System which is not a good practice. They must also be given proper attention and their concerns must also be addressed.
EMR Selection Decision
Although nurses comprise a large part of the staff of an average healthcare practice, research shows that only one out of four nurses participate in the buying decision of an EHR Software. When the nurses are on board right from the decision making of EHR Software selection, everything that follows becomes streamlined for them.
Data Integration
Since nurses have to use many different software in the practice i.e. a PM Software, and EHR Software, or a Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) Software, it can get really frustrating for them if the data is not consistent throughout. Practices can integrate the data across software to reduce this stress among the nurses.
