PURPOSE: To describe what electronic health record meaningful use requirements
mean for nursing clinical information system (CIS) development.
CONCLUSIONS: The nursing CIS in many, if not most hospitals, has a number of
critical design inadequacies that constrain the meaningful use of nursing data to
ensure quality outcomes for patients and data-based maturing of the nursing
profession.
IMPLICATIONS: It is the responsibility and obligation of nurses to ensure that
CISs are designed for the meaningful use of nursing clinical data. To accomplish
these ends, interoperable clinical nursing data must be documented in a properly
integrated operational CIS, and must be retrievable and stored in data repositories
for analysis and reports.