Exploring the impact of health information technology on communication and collaboration in acute care nursing.

A focus group using nursing informatics experts as informants was conducted to guide development of a survey to explore the impact of health information technology on the role of nurses and interdisciplinary communication in acute care settings. Through analysis of focus group transcripts, five key themes emerged: information, communication, care coordination, interdisciplinary relationships, workflow, and practice effectiveness and efficiency. This served as the basis for development of a survey that will investigate perceptions of acute care providers across the United States regarding the impact of health information technology on the role of nurses and interdisciplinar communication in acute care settings. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of survey development including analysis of transcripts, emergence of key themes, and the processes by which the themes will be employed to inform survey development.