MEDINFO 2015: eHealth-enabled Health I.N. Sarkar et al. (Eds.) © 2015 IMIA and IOS Press. This article is published online with Open Access by IOS Press and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License. doi:10.3233/978-1-61499-564-7-985
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Communication problems between end-users and technicians through a Help Desk in a Health Information System Gabriela Garcia , Agustina Bertoia , Leonel Cameselle , Sonia Benitez , Diego Giunta , Analía Baum , Fernán Gonzalez Bernaldo de Quiros Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Abstract Communication between users and technicians is crucial for improving Help Desk performance. The objective of this study is to know and understand perceptions, and needs of users and help desk technicians. A qualitative study based on interviews was performed. The emergent topics were communication, workload and misperceptions between end-users and technicians. There are false perceptions between them that affect their interaction and work dynamics. Keywords: Qualitative research; perceptions; service support; Health information system
Introduction End-users of Health Information Systems (HIS) must have adequate support and training to ensure proper HIS use. Adequate support requires human and technological resources capable of serving, managing and solving all of the possible problems, and good interpersonal communication skills between users and technicians is needed. Support and training are important components of HIS implementation but procedures, challenges and lessons learned are underrepresented in the literature. A lack of support in complex scenarios like health care organizations may interrupt workflow causing dissatisfaction and impact in patient care. However, little is known about how end-users and technicians perceive their roles, their commitment and how they face communications challenges using a Help Desk (HD). The objective of this research is to understand end-users and technicians insight about their role in the support process.
Methods Setting In 1998 the Health Informatics Department (HID) of Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires (HIBA) started the development and implementation of an HIS. The HID has 150 members from different disciplines. The computational infrastructure consists of 4,000 personal computers and 1,500 devices (printers, scanners, tablets) available for almost 8,000 users. Users can request support using an online HD. Each request generates a ticket that facilitates problem tracking. When the problem is solved, the user receives a survey by email to give feedback about the support.
Design A Qualitative study based on in-depth interviews was conducted between March and September of 2014. Content analysis was performed using Grounded Theory and NVivo 10.
Results Eighteen users (nurses, physicians, other professionals and administrative personnel) and fifteen HD technicians were interviewed. The emergent topics were: communication, workload (including perception of workload, priority of tasks, type of problem, type of end-user, feedback), and misperceptions between end-users and technicians. The most important are communication and misperceptions. Technicians say they need to contact the user who made the request due to lack of information in the ticket description; highlighting the importance of verbal communication with the user. Users also believe it is better to communicate by telephone with technicians before requesting support because they doubt that it is well written or they feel there is a lack of information to explain the problem. The technicians have the perception that users: (1) think their requests have high priority; (2) do not cooperate to be located easily; (3) are dissatisfied with the delay on ticket resolution; (4) do not value the technicians’ work, because users do not give any feedback. On the other hand, users have the perception that the technicians do not try to communicate with users. However, users recognize that is difficult to be found because of the work dynamics, and understand that the delay in resolution is due to the HD workload. Finally, users admit that they do not value the technicians’ work enough.
Conclusion Users and technicians are the main actors in the HD process. To ensure good support of an HIS, it is necessary to implement communication strategies to remove barriers that create false perceptions. Address for correspondence Gabriela Garcia Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires
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