The Inclusion of Nurses in the Systems Development Life Cycle Essay

The Consequences of Ignoring Nurses’ Participation in the SDLC

Failure to involve nurses in each stage of the SDLC when purchasing and implementing a new system is fraught with poor coordination between management and staff, which, in turn, can make the optimization process ineffective. According to McGonigle and Mastrian (2017), junior medical personnel is involved in several organizational tasks, including planning, evaluating, and implementing the necessary work strategies.

If any optimization solutions are discussed without nurses, these solutions may be irrelevant or illogical in the context of the current operating environment of a particular medical department. Louis (2011) cites different implications of misunderstandings between stakeholders when implementing the SDLC into a workflow and notes that desired outcomes may not match the actual results. Therefore, nurses are stakeholders involved in every stage of implementation to avoid wasting money and drawing up operationally unjustified work strategies.

Issues During the Implementation of the SDLC

Implementing the SDLC can be challenging due to inadequate planning and evaluation. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (n.d.b), the impact on both administrative and clinical practice should be considered. In the planning phase, insufficient tasks may be allocated, and the involvement of nurses is a potentially valuable solution to define the functionality of the SDLC to cover the required objectives.

The design phase implies compiling an operational framework, but valuable options can be missed, which can also be solved by engaging nursing staff to define the spectrum of tasks. The implementation stage can be accompanied by challenges to assess the multitasking of the SDLC, and nurses can act as contributors to define specific steps to take. Testing is a mandatory phase, but due to the insufficient training of responsible personnel, gaps in the assessment can be allowed. Nurses are aware of performance measures to adhere to and can identify pitfalls and mistakes (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, n.d.a). Finally, maintenance can be challenging due to the incompetence of individual operators, and nurses can advise on the most vulnerable aspects of the SDLC.

The Personal Experiences of Involvement in the SDLC

I have already participated in the assessment and testing of the SDLC in my nursing practice. Along with colleagues, we made recommendations on how to optimize the workload scheduling system, and this participation gave me valuable experience. The inclusion of nurses in the decision-making process stimulates the active discussion of current performance outcomes and highlights the weakest areas that the SDLC can address. Ignoring the role of nursing staff, in turn, carries the risks of inappropriate optimization solutions irrelevant to specific settings and, therefore, an unreasonable waste of available funds.

Conclusion

The SDLC assessment proves that involving nurses in planning and implementing optimization systems is a valuable process. Ignoring the role of junior medical personnel is fraught with errors and gaps at all stages of introduction. My decision-making experience proves that nurses’ membership in action groups increases the likelihood of enhancing performance while not involving nurses, conversely, poses a threat to the reasonableness of the implementation of the SDLC.

 

References

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (n.d.a). Health IT evaluation toolkit and evaluation measures quick reference guide. Web.

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (n.d.b). Workflow assessment for health IT toolkit. Web.

Louis, I. (2011). Systems development life cycle (SDLC) [Video]. YouTube. Web.

McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2017). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4th ed.) Jones & Bartlett Learning.