Web usability...

I've been to another Shared Leadership meeting (part of our ongoing bid to be a Magnet hospital), and one of the topics was how to conduct more effective meetings. The problem, simply put, is that there are so many meetings that are scheduled, that nurses are overwhelmed, and so attendance at the meetings are poor, or their productive output is low.

I've complained about this very thing before. My thoughts are that there are very few meetings that happen which actually put out any product that helps get the job done better, faster, more efficiently or at a lower cost. Most hospital meetings end up being gripe/bitch sessions, and everyone in attendance agrees or disagrees. Possibly some change in policy is worked out, but information from these meetings is never effectively communicated to the floor-nurse level. There are grandiose plans and well-intended efforts, but the floor-nurse is left completely out of the loop.

It doesn't matter if you publish the meeting minutes. No one ever reads them, or if they do, there is not a coordinated effort to translate the cogitations of a meeting into a workable plan.

There are now discussions about having a series of meetings, the topic of which will be the improvement of meetings. Great.

My next big project will be some sort of effort on my part to bring nursing into the 21st century. The corporate world has already made a complete dissection and analysis of this very problem, and have realized that the answer lies in computer technology. Specifically, I'd like to work on getting nurses to use the computer and internet to work together in a virtual, rather than real-time, manner. Here are the advantages, as I see them:

1. It would be possible to have fewer meetings, or at least more productive meetings.

2. More people could participate in the process of Idea Development, especially nursing exemplars, many of whom are not interested in attending meetings.

3. Nurses can network more effectively with one another, so that similar committees can exchange information from one floor/department to another.

4. An intranet interface could bring the ideas out of the committees, and directly to the floor nurse for potential use or modification.

5. Ideas can be warehoused within the facility. Properly indexed and searchable, this repository of knowledge can become available to individual floor nurses with an inter/intranet connection.

6. Ideas can be maintained even after key personnel either discontinue their presence on the committee, or even after they have terminated employment or retired.

7. A document server can be developed so that documents can be developed over the internet, with input available from all personnel.

8. An online spreadsheet functionality can be designed so that data collection from all areas can be entered, tabulated, and stored for review (think Quality Assessment and Continuous Quality Improvement data here).

I was discussing this issue with my sister, Karen, and I find that my knowledge of computers, while formidable on a personal level, seem woefully inadequate in dealing with larger groups of people. I feel the need to go to our IT department, have them install software on our intranet, and crank up a corporate blog, a large network of message boards, and expect every floor nurse to just jump in there and start typing away at their computers, as though born and cut their teeth on Tech TV. I see now that the job will be a long-term and gradual one, with an ongoing effort to bring nurses and CPUs together in a meaningful and productive way.

Well, at least I've come up with a first step - research. I have gone to Barnes and Noble and Borders Books and perused the computer books, but without knowing a topic or subject, I wasn't able to figure out what I needed to read. Again, Karen to the rescue. I'm heading out tomorrow to look at books on "Web Usability." I utilized the phrase in a search on Amazon dot com, and came up with quite a number of texts. Hopefully, a few of them will be on the shelves when I go. My reading list so far:

Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity, by Jakob Nielsen

The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web, by Jesse James Garrett

Web Usability for Dummies, by Bud Smith, Bed E. Smith, Richard Mander

Usability Business: Making the Web Work, by Bawa, Trenner and Dorazio

I've been to Microsoft's Sharepoint site, and it looks like something we could use. It looks pricey, though. I'm not sure how the number of users may impact the cost (it looks significant) but we're talking $2K, at least.

Any input on this subject, please leave a comment or send me some email.

Comments

[BA Dissertation]

Blogs are so informative where we get lots of information on any topic. Nice job keep it up!!

[Eric]

My sister Karen said the same thing! She will be doing some tutoring of cgi and MySQL (and php too) in the upcoming days. When I was at the bookstore, I did see a lot of books about these subjects, and I thumbed through several of them. We'll have to see if it's something I can learn on my own...

[Kimber]

A lot of what you want can be done in simple CGI and MySQL if you have a reliable and adequate server to work with. I can dig up some sources if you want to look into it. Let me know.