Qualitative study exploring service users’ and health care professionals’ opinions of electronic maternity notes
Electronic Medical Notes (EMNs) have been used in primary care for many years and have recently been introduced into maternity care. An exploratory qualitative evaluation of Electronic Maternity Notes has been designed to examine strengths, challenges and improvement opportunities through stakeholder engagement (service providers and users). Findings will guide system enhancements to optimise care.
What is the problem?
Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) have been used in primary care for many years and have recently been introduced into maternity care. A recent systematic review (Hawley et al. 2014) evaluated EMRs versus paper handheld records in maternity care, focussed on the completeness of the entered data, user experiences, and process improvements. The review found no studies evaluating the effect of electronic records on data set completeness.
What we will do
In England, Badgernet has the predominant market share as a provider of a maternity EPR and is used in 47 (40%) hospitals. Epic is an all-inclusive EPR with a built-in maternity module (Stork) with the maternity module used in only six hospitals in England. These two systems have different features that might have influenced stakeholder perceptions. First, Badgernet has limited integration with non-maternity systems in an institution (for example- lack of electronic prescribing, imaging requests). Epic is a hospital wide system incorporating many services such as pharmacy, laboratories, imaging and neo-natal wards. Second, Badgernet comes with extensive in-built decision support while any decision support in Epic must be generated by individual providers at their discretion. We selected these Badgernet and EPIC EMN systems to explore stakeholder views of the relative strengths and weaknesses of these and other potential differences between the two systems.
We will conduct an exploratory qualitative evaluation of Electronic Maternity Notes (EMNs) in England with the following objectives:
• Assess opportunities and problems experienced by EMN stakeholders (service providers and users) in maternity care
• Elicit stakeholders’ views on potential alterations or extensions to the EMN system
• Evaluate users’ views on decision support within the EMNs.
The Patient Information Sheet for health care professionals can be accessed here (PDF).
The Patient Information Sheet for patients can be accessed here (PDF).