This is part 17 of the Nursing Research Challenge. I utilized this article for a recent presentation. Chances are, you’ll need to reference it, too, or if not, simply enjoy it for your reading pleasure. If you are looking for more articles like this one, sift through the article reference list. Good stuff.

The Article: Putzer, G. & Park, Y. (2011). The effects of innovation factors on smartphone adoption among nurses in community hospitals. Perspectives in Health Information Management, 7(winter): 1b.

Big Idea: This article examines which factors influence nurses’ adoption of smartphones – a relatively new technology – in the practice setting. Eighty  nurses from two different community hospitals – one non-profit and one for-profit – completed the survey.

Survey Says!: The researchers found several characteristics contributing to nurses’ smartphone adoption including observability (e.g. actually seeing the innovation in action), compatibility (e.g. the innovation works with other equipment, etc.), job relevance (e.g. the innovation makes work easier or improves care), internal environment (e.g. management support, organizational size, etc.), and external environment.

Quotable: “A nurse’s job is highly information intensive. According to Lange, nurses not only are involved with the use of healthcare information systems but also are the creators of clinical information in healthcare organizations.¹⁵ Nurses’ jobs routinely include extensive documentation. Bowles found that nurses may spend 50 percent of their day maintaining documentation of patient records.¹⁶”

“Observability has a positive effect on adoption. When a user has an opportunity to observe an innovation, the innovation is more likely to be adopted.”

So What?: As health information technology (HIT) expands rapidly, it is imperative for nurses and other healthcare professionals to adopt the innovations within HIT. Nurses will always be the largest group of healthcare professionals within a hospital, and nurses, in general, are typically  late adopters of technology. It is important for HIT groups and hospital management teams to keep the innovation factors – observability, compatibility, job relevance, internal environment, and external environment – in mind when integrating new technologies into nursing care.