The Effectiveness of Electronic Nursing Documentation in Improving the Quality of Care of Hospitalized Patients

Objectives: to assess and compare nurse burnout related to the use of E-based versus paper-based nursing documentation, identify the effectiveness of E-nursing documentation in improving the quality hospitalized patients’ care, and to explore and compare the relationship between burnout and the quality of hospitalized patient care. A comparative, analytical descriptive approach was used. Methods: The current study employed the analytical-descriptive approach which seeks for verifying the effectiveness of electronic nursing documentation in improving the quality of hospitalized patients' care. A convenient sample of patient records and nurses from two purposefully selected hospitals, one uses electronic nursing documentation (King Fahad Medical City) and the other uses paper nursing documentation (Alsulayl general hospital), KSA. Tools: A-The Maslach burnout inventory to assess burn out among nurses in both hospitals, B-The Cat-ch-Ing instrument for assessing quality and quantity of nursing documentation and C-a structured patient survey tool. Results: There were differences in burnout in favor of paper-based documentation, and statistically significant differences were found between the study sample users of E-documentation and paper documentation on the quality of hospitalized patients' care in favor of e-nursing documentation at P (0.01), a negative correlative relationship was found between all burnout dimensions and the overall degree of burnout and the quality of hospitalized patients' care. Conclusion: Use of Electronic nursing documentation was of great value on patient outcomes, and nurses’ burnout.