EMR Usage and Nurse Documentation Burden in a Medical Intensive Care Unit

Electronic medical records (EMRs) are a standard documentation system that contains vital patient health history. Although EMR system was implemented to improve nurse documentation, many healthcare workers feel the burden of EMR documentation. Due to the questions regarding the effectiveness of EMR from health care workers, it is necessary to investigate nurse EMR usage patterns and analyze timestamps in nurse documentation. In this study, a multi-factor observational study was conducted using EMR log data from five nurses working 12-h day shifts in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU). To study the deviances in timestamps of nurses, the Response Time Measurement System (RTMS) was used to examine nurse documentation time. The frequency of nurses' timestamps related to the patient medical record data was analyzed. The results showed that the frequency of the nurse EMR documentation was significantly higher at the beginning and end of the shifts than at mid-day. Also, we found that there is an association between the frequency of nurse documentation and time interval.