1. Staff experience of introducing the ‘electronic patient record’
There is a lot of excitement about patient’s accessing their notes, but the practicalities of introducing this service to an already busy primary care workforce can be daunting. Millstream Surgery is a rural practice of 4500 patients using EMIS. This audit looked at the staff and GP experiences of this process before, and 6 months after the EPR was introduced. An anonymised survey- monkey questionnaire was used to collect feedback.
The results show a trend towards greater confidence in the EPR as well as less concern about workload and harm. There were no examples of patient harm.
The protocol and FAQ supporting documents are available to view. Staff found these documents and a single education session to be sufficient training. There were no suggestions from the survey to better the current documents.
Although many GPs may feel that the EPR would benefit their patients, there is a need for greater support and clearer guidance about implementation from the department of health to support individual Surgeries to achieve this.
Author: Dr Alexander Gillies. GP.