NURS 5051/6051: Transforming Nursing and Healthcare Through Information Technology | Week 7

Consider a clinical process or task that you perform on a frequent basis. Do you do it the same every time? Why do you proceed the way you do? Habit? Protocol? Each day nurses complete certain tasks that are considered routine, but have you ever stopped to reflect on why things are done the way they are? Perhaps you have noticed areas where there is a duplication of efforts or an inefficient use of time. Other tasks might pass seamlessly from person to person. In order to design the most efficient flow of work through an organization, it is useful to understand workflow and the ways it can be structured for the most optimal use of time and resources.

This week, you examine the concept of workflow and how the design of the workflow impacts the effectiveness and quality of an organization. You analyze a current workflow design and formulate a new workflow design to improve a process.

 

Learning Objectives

Students will:

• Analyze the effect of system design and workflow on health care quality
• Analyze the steps in a current workflow design
• Formulate a new workflow design to improve a process

Learning Resources

Note: To access this week’s required library resources, please click on the link to the Course Readings List, found in the Course Materials section of your Syllabus.

Required Readings – NURS 5051/6051:Week 7: Systems Design and Workflow Assignment

McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2018). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning.

• Chapter 13, “Workflow and Beyond Meaningful Use”This chapter reviews the reasons for conducting workflow analysis and design. The author explains specific workflow analysis and redesign techniques.

Huser, V., Rasmussen, L. V., Oberg, R., & Starren, J. B. (2011). Implementation of workflow engine technology to deliver basic clinical decision support functionality. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 11(1), 43–61.

In this article, the authors describe an implementation of workflow engine technology to support clinical decision making. The article describes some of the pitfalls of implementation, along with successful and future elements.

Koppel, R., & Kreda, D. A. (2010). Healthcare IT usability and suitability for clinical needs: Challenges of design, workflow, and contractual relations. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 157, 7–14.

This article points to many health information technology designs and workflow decisions that limit their value and usage. The authors also examine the structure of the conceptual relationships between HIT vendors and the clinical facilities that purchase HIT.

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. (n.d.b). Workflow assessment for health IT toolkit. Retrieved, June 18, 2012, from http://healthit.ahrq.gov/portal/server.pt/community/health_it_tools_and_resources/919/workflow_assessment_for_health_it_toolkit/27865

This article supplies a toolkit on the planning, design, implementation, and use of health information technology. The sections of the website provide a definition of workflow, examples of workflow tools, related anecdotes, and research.

Document: Sample Workflow of Answering a Telephone in an Office (Word document)

Note: You will use this document to complete this week’s Assignment.

Required Media

Laureate Education (Producer). (2012f). System design and workflow. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Discussion: Understanding Workflow Design

As you explored last week, the implementation of a new technology can dramatically affect the workflow of an organization. Newly implemented technologies can initially limit the productivity of users as they adjust to their new tools. Such implementations tend to be so significant that they often require workflows to be redesigned in order to achieve improvements in safety and patient outcomes. However, before workflows can be redesigned, they must first be analyzed. This analysis includes each step in completing a certain process. Some systems duplicate efforts or contain unnecessary steps that waste time and money and could even jeopardize patient health care. By reviewing and modifying the workflow, you enable greater productivity. This drive to implement new technologies has elevated the demand for nurses who can perform workflow analysis.

In this Discussion you explore resources that have been designed to help guide you through the process of workflow assessment.

To prepare:

• Take a few minutes and peruse the information found in the article “Workflow Assessment for Health IT Toolkit” listed in this week’s Learning Resources.
  • As you check out the information located on the different tabs, identify key concepts that you could use to improve a workflow in your own organization and consider how you could use them.
  • Go the Research tab and identify and read one article that is of interest to you and relates to your specialty area.

By Day 3

Post a summary of three different concepts you found in “Workflow Assessment for Health IT Toolkit” that would help in redesigning a workflow in the organization in which you work (or one with which you are familiar) and describe how you would apply them. Next, summarize the article you selected and assess how you could use the information to improve workflow within your organization. Finally, evaluate the importance of monitoring the effect of technology on workflow.

Read a selection of your colleagues’ responses. Focus particularly on questions raised for which you can add comments based on your experiences or situations. Consider how your colleagues’ postings reflect and/or differ from your own perceptions and opinions. Review the Learning Resources for any clarification needed before responding.

By Day 6

Respond to at least two of your colleagues on two different days using one or more of the following approaches:

• Ask a probing question, substantiated with additional background information, evidence or research.
• Share an insight from having read your colleagues’ postings, synthesizing the information to provide new perspectives.
• Offer and support an alternative perspective using readings from the classroom or from your own research in the Walden Library.
• Validate an idea with your own experience and additional research.
• Make a suggestion based on additional evidence drawn from readings or after synthesizing multiple postings.
• Expand on your colleagues’ postings by providing additional insights or contrasting perspectives based on readings and evidence. Understanding Workflow Design Discussion

 

 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION 

Understanding Workflow Design

Introduction

Workflows are the most common way to organize work in an organization. They’re used for everything from managing customer orders to processing financial transactions. There’s no better way to understand how a workflow works than by creating one yourself! In this post I’ll show you how to design a basic workflow using Freeboard—a tool originally designed for building apps on the Amazon Web Services platform (AWS).

How to Design a Good Workflow

Before you can design a good workflow, you have to understand what the problem is. You need to set goals for yourself and decide on the kind of process you want to create.

It’s important that these goals are realistic, but ambitious at the same time. For example: “I want my team members working together more efficiently” might be a good goal but it isn’t helpful if your deadline is six months away from now! It also doesn’t allow for setbacks or delays because there’s no way of knowing how long it will take until everyone agrees on something (or even if they do). Instead, try something like “I want us all completing our tasks within two weeks.” This allows for some room for flexibility in scheduling as well as making sure everyone has enough time invested into each task so they don’t get bored or discouraged by having too much work done too quickly without any real progress being made towards meeting those goals (which would happen if we didn’t give ourselves enough space).

Processes vs. Workflows

Workflow is a series of steps. A workflow is an agreed-upon process for doing something, like “creating an account” or “writing a proposal.” A process is how you do something, like “create an account,” but it’s also more than just that—it shows how your team goes about doing its work.

Processes and workflows are generally easier to understand than processes without any sort of structure or guidance (which would be like walking down the street: there’s no map). It may seem obvious now but if someone had told me this at first I probably wouldn’t have understood what they meant by workflow design because my brain wasn’t wired for it yet!

Steps Involved in Workflow Design

Before you begin the process of designing your workflow, it’s important to think about what you want this process to achieve. For example, if you are creating a workflow that is intended to help people track their expenses, then it will likely be helpful for them to know how much money they have spent in each category.

If this information isn’t already available somewhere else (like on an accounting system), then defining this as part of your customer’s workflow might help them understand why they need access now rather than later – or at least make sure they’re aware they can still access other parts of their account later if necessary.

The Importance of Testing

Testing a workflow is an important part of the design process. In order to make sure that your workflows are as effective and efficient as possible, you should test them in a controlled environment before they go live.

The best way to do this is by using tools like Selenium and Cucumber (or similar). These allow you to simulate real-world user interactions with the system under test, so that you can see how users interact with it and whether or not it performs well enough for their needs. You can then use these results when designing new features or adding improvements after implementation has already begun on live services!

Takeaway:

When you’re designing your workflow, make sure to test it. That’s the best way to ensure that your workflows are well-suited for the tasks they need to handle. Once you’ve got a good idea of how things will go and what kind of information flows through each step in the process, find ways to improve it based on user feedback.

For example: if someone asks you “why don’t we just use this instead?”, then maybe there should be an easy way for them to get hold of those files instead! Or maybe if someone says “why does this happen?” then maybe there should be a better way for them tell us why?

Conclusion

We hope these tips will help you design a process to suit your needs. Workflow design is a complex topic, and we’ve only covered the basics here. If you want to learn more about it, check out our other blog posts on this topic!