The Inclusion of Nurses in the Systems Development Life Cycle.

The Inclusion of Nurses in the SDLC
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The Inclusion of Nurses in the SDLC
Nurses hold significant responsibilities in the implementation of a new health information technology (IT) system. In particular, they are among the health professionals who interact with patients directly. Caregivers obtain relevant data from different stakeholders, which is vital in improving the quality of patient care. As such, nurses should not be left out in the systems development life cycle (SDLC). SDLC refers to a procedural or iterative process that provides the framework for implementing a new IT system in a healthcare organization. In particular, the seven primary SDLC’s stages include planning, systems requirements and analysis, development, design, implementation, testing and integration, and operations and maintenance. Nurses’ inclusion in the SDLC fosters the effectiveness of all the stages involved, which improves the efficiency of the health IT system.
The failure to involve nurses in each phase of the SDLC, when buying and implementing a new IT system, might have adverse consequences on the healthcare organization. For example, if caregivers are not involved in the planning stage, software engineers cannot define the scope of the IT system clearly. As such, some resources are likely to be wasted during the implementation of the new IT system. The second phase, system requirements, involves determining specific roles of the primary actors (Qin et al., 2017). At this point, nurses’ contributions are significantly required to determine the functionalities of different users. For instance, without involving caregivers, it would be hard to know the boundary between the roles of a doctor, therapist, and a nurse practitioner. System design entails, including features and specifications that enhance the efficiency of the functional requirements. For example, by involving nurses, software engineers can understand how to develop a friendly user interface.
Development involves implementing the system based on the established requirements. Nurses are involved in this stage to ensure that they are comfortable with various features of the new IT system. For example, they understand the technical side of what happens when the laboratory technician sends test results to a doctor. Integration and testing entail using the newly developed system to determine whether it meets the established requirements or not (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015). Without involving nurses ...