Abstract
BackgroundLike other sectors, the healthcare sector has to deal with the issue of users’ acceptance of IT. In healthcare, different factors affecting healthcare professionals’ acceptance of software applications have been investigated. Unfortunately, inconsistent results have been found, maybe because the different studies focused on different IT and occupational groups. Consequently, more studies are needed to investigate these implications for recent technology, such as Electronic Health Records (EHR).MethodsGiven these findings in the existing literature, we pose the following research question: “To what extent do the different categories of clinical staff (physicians, paraprofessionals and administrative personnel) influence the intention to use an EHR and its antecedents?” To answer this research question we develop a research model that we empirically tested via a survey, including the following variables: intention to use, ease of use, usefulness, anxiety, self-efficacy, trust, misfit and data security. Our purpose is to clarify the possible differences existing between different staff categories.ResultsFor the entire personnel, all the hypotheses are confirmed: anxiety, self-efficacy, trust influence ease of use; ease of use, misfit, self-efficacy, data security impact usefulness; usefulness and ease of use contribute to intention to use the EHR. They are also all confirmed for physicians, residents, carers and nurses but not for secretaries and assistants. Secretaries’ and assistants’ perception of the ease of use of EHR does not influence their intention to use it and they could not be influenced by self-efficacy in the development of their perception of the ease of use of EHR.ConclusionsThese results may be explained by the fact that secretaries, unlike physicians and nurses, have to follow rules and procedures for their work, including working with EHR. They have less professional autonomy than healthcare professionals and no medical responsibility. This result is also in line with previous literature highlighting that administrators are more motivated by the use of IT in healthcare.
Highlights
Like other sectors, the healthcare sector has to deal with the issue of users’ acceptance of information technology (IT)
We pose the following research question: “To what extent do the different categories of clinical staff influence the intention to use an Electronic Health Records (EHR) and its antecedents?”
Concerning our three categories of interest: 169 secretaries and assistants responded to the first questionnaire and 151 the second one, on the 547 total secretaries and assistants employed; 759 carers and nurses participated in the first data collection and 504 in the second one, on the 3754 carers and nurses working at the hospital; 574 physicians and residents contributed to the first questionnaire and 286 to the second one on a total population 1427
Summary
The healthcare sector has to deal with the issue of users’ acceptance of IT. Paraprofessionals adopt more favorable attitudes toward new technology than doctors because they are likely to perceive it as an effective tool for facilitating coordination with other healthcare groups, another important role for them in addition to their bedside responsibilities [12, 14]. Administrative personnel seem to take yet another point of view They coordinate external and internal activities, for example, doctors’ and paraprofessionals’ schedules, to optimize healthcare operations [12]. They generally have a favorable attitude toward the adoption and use of new IT in healthcare because it helps them monitor and manage the work of doctors and paraprofessionals [12, 16]
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