Nurses’ Views on Electronic Medical Records (EMR) in Turkey: An Analysis According to Use, Quality and User Satisfaction

Electronic medical records are generally used by nurses in hospitals. However, studies investigating views on and evaluations of electronic medical records by nurses are limited in Turkey and in other countries around the world. Thus, in this study, nurses’ views on electronic medical record systems will be investigated in terms of use, quality and user satisfaction. Our goal was to investigate the views on electronic medical records used by nurses working at hospital clinics (inpatient care units). Moreover, in this study, we will examine whether there are relationships among the use, quality and user satisfaction of electronic medical records. This study is composed of field research conducted using questionnaires. To prepare the data-measuring instrument, the literature on electronic medical records was reviewed. In addition, during the pilot run of the questionnaire, some revisions were made to the measuring instrument to account for the views of nurse managers in the field. The questionnaire consists of 35 items: 12 items for use, 12 items for quality and 11 items for user satisfaction. A Likert scale type was used in this questionnaire. Responses for usage and quality were assigned a value of 1–5 (‘never/almost never/not at all’ to ‘always/almost always’) for each item. Responses for user satisfaction were assigned a value of 1–5 (‘not at all’, to ‘very great’) for each item. The study was planned and conducted on nurses working at inpatient care units at one public university hospital, one Turkish Ministry of Health hospital and one private hospital in Kocaeli. A sampling technique was not used because we aimed to conduct the questionnaire among all nurses. At the end of this study, the questionnaire had been conducted on 200 nurses. We found that the average score for the nurses’ satisfaction with electronic medical records was 3.28, the average score for using electronic medical records was 1.96, and the average score for the quality of electronic medical records was 3.16. We also determined that there are significant relationships among the use, quality and user satisfaction of electronic medical records. This study revealed that there are significant differences among the mean quality scores for the EMR systems in the Ministry of health hospital, the university hospital and the private hospital. Interestingly, 59.0% of all participants in this study felt that EMR systems were not well integrated into their workflow. In addition, half of all respondents had not been trained in using EMR systems.