What Are the Advantages & Disadvantages in Electronic Charting?

Electronic charting is the wave of the future. There will be a computer at every bedside, and every nurse will type her notes. Electronic charting has some distinct advantages over paper charting, but there are some disadvantages, too. A computer makes it very easy to keep a chart readable and accessible, but it is very easy to become accustomed to the ease of a computer. Most computers eventually crash, and in a world that doesn't stop, like health care, nurses have to know how to keep going.

Legibility

• Electronic charting is always legible because it is done on a computer screen. There is no question about what an order says or what a note indicates because typeface is not in question. Abbreviations and terms that go against hospital standards can also be automatically edited out of electronic charting to avoid confusion that paper charting can cause. Furthermore, all entries into the record are automatically time- and date-stamped so that an accurate record of the patient's treatments can be followed.

Prompting

• Nurses can be prompted by the computer to ask certain questions for their charting or to give certain medications. The computer serves as a guide to help the nurse give proper and safe care. Having a computer function in this way is a definite advantage when a nurse has a high case load and can easily make a mistake or overlook an item to chart. A computer can remind her to check an important assessment and make all the difference to a patient's outcome.

Accessibility

• Electronic charts are always available and easy to access. There is no need to hunt down a chart from any of the myriad places it could be. It can simply be pulled up on the computer screen and manipulated. The information on a patient chart also does not take up as much room on a computer.

Expensive Start-up

• One of the disadvantages of electronic charting is how expensive it is to start and maintain. All of the computers cost money to purchase and keep running, and this can be prohibitive to smaller hospitals. It also costs a lot to train employees to use the new technology. These factors have kept many hospitals and nursing homes from changing over to computer charting because the money is not available for the conversion. The hardware, software and personnel are just not in place for the transformation.

Downtime

• The other disadvantage of computer charting is the dreaded downtime. If a computer system crashes, everyone has to go back to hand charting for a while, and this may create some unrest and tension. Training is available in downtime procedures, but few people like working without computers once they are used to them.