Lack of Human Resources Leads to Breaches in Information Management Processes

Abstract

Effective information management promotes safe patient care. Lack of human resources can cause failures when managing patient information. The aim of this study was to analyse the nature of reported patient safety incidents and their location in Choo's information management process model phases when the contributing factor of the incidents was related to human resources and the consequence of the incident was related to harm to the organization's corporate image. Data consisted of the information management related patient safety incident reports (n = 475) from 49 health and social care organizations from 2007-2016 in Finland. Deductive analysis and descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data. The results of the study indicated that the shortage of human resources contributed to incomplete documentation, insufficient information sharing between professionals and documenting of information in the wrong place. The majority of the incidents occurred during the information organizing and storage and information distribution phases of the information management process model. Despite the use of electronic health records and electronic patient data, a lack of human resources can lead to breaches in information management processes and harm an organization's corporate image in health and social care contexts.