Date Approved

2025

Degree Type

Open Access Project

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

School

Nursing

Committee Member

Angela Lukomski, DNP, RN, CPNP-PC (Chair)

Committee Member

Meriam Caboral-Stevens, PhD, RN, CNE, NP, FNYAM, FAAN

Committee Member

Carly Mouhajer, FNP, MSN, RN

Committee Member

Nicole Podczervinski DNP, RN, FNP

Abstract

Background and Literature Review:
Home based medical care (HBMC), part of Optum’s UnitedHealth division, delivers in-home urgent care to medically complex patients at high risk for hospitalization. A nurse is dispatched to the home and a provider connects via telemedicine to conduct the visit. Currently, there is no standardized documentation tool to communicate physical assessment findings between the in-home nurse and the telemedicine provider. A literature review was conducted using PubMed and CINAHL with search terms including nursing satisfaction, physical assessment, EMR, template, standardized tool, and documentation. This revealed challenges in nursing documentation, communication, and physical assessment, particularly regarding the integration of templates within electronic health records.

Purpose: 
Guided by the technology acceptance model, the purpose of this project was to evaluate HBMC nurse’s satisfaction with a newly integrated physical assessment template.

Methods: 
A quantitative quality improvement project guided by the technology acceptance model was conducted with 39 nurses. The physical assessment template was used by the nurses for 2 weeks. The usefulness, satisfaction, and ease of use questionnaire, consisting of 26 item responses on a 7-point Likert scale, was administered before and after the physical assessment template was implemented. Descriptive statistics were used to describe nurse’s characteristics and paired-samples t-tests were used to compare scores pre-and-post implementation of the physical assessment template.

Results: 
Comparing nurses’ satisfaction before and after the implementation of the physical assessment template were not statistically significant (3.73 and 3.85, pre-and-post respectively). However, the scores in usefulness with a mean of 3.53 (SD = 0.51) to 4.06 (SD = 0.75), t(38) = – 4.00, p < 0.001 and ease of use with a mean of 3.50 (SD = 0.41) to 4.10 (SD = 0.58), t(38) = – 5.33, p < 0.001, were both statistically significant.

Conclusion: 
The study showed that nurses find the new physical assessment template to be useful and easy to use. This suggests that although the results did not show statistical significance in satisfaction with the use of the physical assessment template, there was an increase in the satisfaction score. Further refinement may be needed to enhance satisfaction in home-based settings.

Included in

Nursing Commons

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