The objective of the healthcare record is “to identify problems and to understand the impact of the illness on the individual” thereby enabling the “amelioration of the problem to the patient’s satisfaction, within the bounds of medical capabilities and society’s resource limitations” (Simpson and Robinson 115).
If such is the case, within the nursing profession, there is a need to shift from the use of paper based health records to computer based health records since computer based health records are more efficient than paper based health records. The main limitation of the paper bound records stem from their inability to be multiply accessible to members of society. Traditional utilization of paper based medical records leads to the dispersion of clinical information as a result of the heterogeneous character of hospital systems.
Due to this, the development of a clinical information system that can integrate hospital information as well as enable cooperation amongst legacy systems becomes a difficult task. System integration as well as the development of an efficient clinical information management system is thereby dependent upon the creation of conceptual and architectural tools that will enable such integration. This system integration can be achieved through the use of computer based health records within hospitals.
Within this context, it is necessary to shift to the use of computer based health records in hospitals since the use of such health records will prove to be more efficient as opposed to the use of paper based health records since the information contained within these records will be more accessible to the members of the hospital.
Work Cited Simpson, L. and P. Robinson, eds. E-Clinical Governance: A Guide for Primary Care. Oxford: Radcliffe Medical Press, 2002.