Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Medical Informatics
Date Submitted: Jan 23, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: Jan 28, 2019 - Mar 25, 2019
Date Accepted: Aug 31, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Usability factors associated with physicians' distress and information system-related stress: A cross-sectional survey study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Constantly changing and difficult to use information systems (IS) have arisen as one important source of stress in physicians’ work. Physicians report several usability problems, system failures, lack of integration between the systems and experience that systems poorly support the documentation and retrieval of patient data. This stress has kept rising in 2000 century and it seems that it may also affect physicians own wellbeing.
Objective:
The present study examined the associations of a) usability variables (perceived benefits, technical problems, support for feedback, and user friendliness), b) number of systems in daily use, c) experience in using IS and d) participation in the IS development work with physicians’ distress and stress related to IS (SRIS) levels.
Methods:
A cross-sectional survey study among 4 018 Finnish physicians (64.8% women) aged between 24 and 64 years (mean = 46.8) in 2017. The analyses of covariance were used to examine the association of independent variables with SRIS and distress (General Health Questionnaire; GHQ) adjusted for age, gender, employment sector, specialization status, and electronic health record (EHR) system in use.
Results:
High levels of technical problems and high number of systems in daily use were associated with high levels of SRIS, whereas high levels of user friendliness, perceived benefits and support for feedback were associated with lower levels of SRIS. Moreover, high levels of technical problems were associated with high levels of psychological distress, whereas high levels of user friendliness were associated with low distress levels. Those who considered themselves as experienced users of IS had lower levels of both SRIS and distress.
Conclusions:
It seems that by investing in user-friendly systems with better technical quality and good support for feedback that professionals perceive as being beneficial would improve the work-related wellbeing and overall wellbeing of physicians. Moreover, improving physicians’ skills related to IS by giving them training could help to lessen the stress that results from poorly functioning IS and improve physicians’ wellbeing.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
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