The Inclusion of Nurses in the Systems Development Life Cycle (Article Critique Sample)

The Inclusion of Nurses in the Systems Development Life Cycle
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The Inclusion of Nurses in the Systems Development Life Cycle
The Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a systematic process of building software that ensures the feasibility and quality of the software built. The SLDC process is meant to guide developers produce high-quality software capable of meeting customer expectations. Even though nurses can contribute to the successful implementation of health information systems, they are rarely consulted in the systems development process. This essay will try to highlight the important role of nurses in software development, especially how they can help solve potential issues at each stage of the SLDC process.
The consequences of a healthcare organization not involving nurses in each stage of the SDLC when purchasing and implementing a new health information system include failure by the technology to effectively streamline individual and organization work process or patient care processes (Nilsen, Stendal, et al., 2020). When nurses, who are the end users of the new system, are not consulted or included in the decision-making processes, the healthcare organization risks purchasing or developing a health information system that does not fit with the typical workflows of clinicians and therefore cannot bring the anticipated individual and institutional benefits (Nilsen, Seing, et al., 2020).
One potential issue that may arise in the first phase of the SDLC (the requirement collection and analysis stage) is failure by senior team members to capture detailed and precise requirements of the project. Because nurses coordinate and conduct direct patient care related activities, they can help address this issue by providing a better understanding of necessary clinical and operational requirements in a coherent manner (AHRQ, 2013). The second phase is the feasibility study stage where economic, legal, operation feasibility, technical, and schedule challenges often appear. Nurses can help in solving some of the operation feasibility, technical, and schedule challenges by providing guidance on how to effectively streamline individual and organization work processes or patient care practices. The third phase of SDLC is the design stage where, architectural and interface challenges arise. Nurses can provide useful insights on how to improve interoperability of health information systems and enhance collaboration between all healthcare professionals (AHRQ, 2021). The coding phase is the next stage where developers are likely to design a system with a false clinical picture because they lack acuity of healthcare operations. Nurses can help coders understand the nursing scope and so develop a system that reflects institutional processes and can be integrated into practice.
The fifth step of the SDLC process is the testing phase where senior members may wrongly approve functionality of the system. Nurses can help the healthcare organization determine if a new health system will bring intended clinical and organizational benefits or just add to the burden of formality for the clinician. The installation phase is the sixth stage where deployment issues such as training logistics issues emerge (Guru99, 2019). Nurse leaders can help with training their colleagues and serve as project champions to ensure widespread acceptance of the new healthcare system. Maintenance is the final phase of the SDLC process where new needs are identified and upgrading is required. Nurses are the primary end-users of the health information system and can provide useful insights on how to improve specific system aspects such as user-friendliness (Sebetci, 2018).
I participated in the planning and development of a new healthcare information system in my nursing practice and some of the potential impacts of my inclusion in the decision-making process included improved practicality and implementation of the system. My experiences as a frontline nurse allowed me to advise the project team on how to improve the design of the system to better reflect individual and organization work practices as well as patient care processes. I also provided suggestions on how to improve the clinical relevance, accessibility, as well as ease of using and understanding the system.
Nurse involvement is critical at all stages of the SDLC process in order to identify and accommodate the diverse needs and expectations of the end-user community. Not involving nurses at each stage of the SLDC may result in an ill-designed system that is not only inconvenient