ABSTRACT
Clinicians saw the system as the administration’s reporting tool, whereas the administration described the system as benefiting clinicians and improving clinical care. Administration and the clinicians had different notions of success. A local computer scientist had produced the system in close consultation with clinical and quality assurance staff. Introducing information systems to clinical care requires changing the way clinicians interact with patients and gather and process information and challenges their decision-making at the point of care in front of both colleagues and patients. These changes can be stressful for clinicians; if other major stressors already exist, such as a recent hospital merger, new programs to measure clinicians’ quality performance, or decreased physician income, and then the stress of a new health information technology (IT) system may be impossible to bear. The essential component is the opportunity for hospital management, IT, and the clinicians to express their views, concerns, and experiences, while also listening to those of the other groups.
