Date of Award

5-2021

Document Type

Campus Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Nursing

First Advisor

Priscilla Gazarian

Second Advisor

Lingling Zhang

Third Advisor

Patricia Dykes

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to understand the relationship between documentation burden and clinician burnout syndrome in nurses working in direct patient care. The Office of the National Coordinator considers documentation burden is considered a high priority problem (The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), 2020). However, the presence of documentation burden in nurses working in direct patient care is not well known. Furthermore, the presence of documentation burden has not been adequately linked to the development of clinician burnout syndrome. This convergent mixed-method design consisted of a survey comprised of three tools: (1) The burden of documentation for nurses and mid-wives survey, the system usability scale, and Maslach’s burnout inventory for medical professionals. In addition, ten interviews were conducted using a convenience sample and one additional interview was conducted using a purposive sample. The purpose of the interviews was to discover nurses’ experiences documenting patient care. Pearson correlational analysis was conducted on the variables in the survey. The results of the analysis demonstrated that documentation burden does correlate to clinician burnout syndrome. Furthermore, poor usability of the electronic health record (EHR) also demonstrated that it contributes to documentation burden and clinician burnout syndrome. The results of the data analysis of the interviews found that there are significant themes surrounding documentation burden including documentation time demand, system usability, and interference with patient care. The results of this study demonstrate that there is a significant relationship between documentation burden and clinician burnout syndrome. Furthermore, the data results from this study also serve as the basis for the Theory of Documentation Burnout which describes the relationship between documentation burden and clinician burnout syndrome. Additional studies will need to be conducted using a larger sample size to understand if this theory is applicable to other populations of nurses working in direct patient care.

Comments

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