Communication of care is essential in the multidisciplinary health care system and the patient record is an important tool for communication. The electronic patient record was introduced to facilitate the documentation of care, as well as the communication and evaluation of care. District nurses met the patient independently of other caregivers at the surgery or in the patient’s home. Documentation by district nurses is assumed to contribute to the view of the patient so that safe care can be carried out in primary health care. This thesis investigates and analyses the electronic nursing documentation in primary health care with emphasis on the content, district nurses’ experiences of documentation and how the information in the documentation was used. A further aim was to implement and evaluate the effect on standardised nursing documentation, using patients with leg ulcer as an example. A sample of 239 district nurses, 430 general practitioners and 74 care unit managers answered questionnaires about the nursing documentation and the use of it. One hundred and nine nursing records were audited. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used for data analysis. Documentation by district nurses lacked clear nursing status, judgment (nursing diagnosis) and nursing goals. Legal requirements were not fulfilled. Medical facts were carefully documented while relevant issues to nursing occurred only seldom. District nurses stated that they were satisfied with their documentation but were in need of education. The focus of the in-service training for documentation was technical rather than involving nursing issues. Fifty-eight per cent of the general practitioners read the nursing documentation always or often and found it valuable. They had problems, however, finding the information because of the unclear nursing status, the lack of district nurses’ judgement and the large quantity of notes regarding routine activities in district nurses’ documentation. The nursing documentation was used by 75 % of the care unit managers for evaluating resources and by 51 % for evaluating care. The categories ’prioritisation’, ’inadequate nursing records’, and ’lack of interest’, illustrate for what reasons the care unit mangers did not use the documentation for evaluation of care. In order to advance district nurses documentation, a standardised nursing wound care record was designed and implemented in nine primary health care centers, with a total of 83 district nurses. Eight primary health care centers were used as a control group, including 56 district nurses. A questionnaire was sent to the district nurses and 102 nursing records were audited before and after implementation. The standardised nursing record improves the descriptions of patient’s health history and status. Nursing diagnoses were more frequently used but were of low quality. Using the standardised nursing wound care record was experienced by the district nurses as being more timeconsuming but also more informative about the patient. Furthermore the knowledge in documentation increased among the district nurses in the intervention group. Improvement of nursing documentation is necessary in order to obtain documentation that fulfills legal requirements. The managers had a great responsibility to upgrade the documentation, which can be effected by continuing support. Documentation must be seen as a means of transferring information about the patient and of determining whether the best care has been given. A standardised documentation could increase the possibility to compare and determine the value of care. Strengthening the awareness of nursing among district nurses should involve strengthening the documentation, which ought to lead to safer care for the patient.

Bakgrund: En bra kommunikation är en förutsättning för god kvalitet och patientsäkerhet i vården och när två olika system används har vi funderat över vad som händer med omvårdnadsdokumentationen när patienten förflyttas mellan vårdenheterna. Syftet: Vårt syfte med studien var att undersöka om de omvårdnadsåtgärder som operations-sjuksköterskan dokumenterat i operationsplaneringssystemet och rapporterat vidare, återfinns i omvårdnadsjournalen. Metod: En kvalitetsgranskning av journalanteckningar har utförts. Inklusionskriterierna var att patienterna opererats under minst tre timmar och att vårdtiden efter operationen var minst 24 timmar, då det var det första dygnets journalföring som kvalitetsgranskades. Sammanlagt granskades 40 stycken journaler. Resultat: I studien granskades sex stycken sökord ur operationsplaneringssystemet, vilka var; hudstatus, operationsläge, dränage, KAD, förband samt hudsuturer. Studien visade att överföringen av informationen var bristfällig. I en del fall framkommer det att information saknades eller förändrades när patienten förflyttades från operationsavdelningen till vårdavdelningen. Vidare framkom det att patienten förflyttades mer än en gång mellan vårdenheter. Slutsats: Resultatet i vår studie anser vi tyder på att en gemensam standardiserad journal med tydliga riktlinjer skulle underlätta för informationsöverföringen mellan de olika enheterna. Klinisk betydelse: Risken för att fel eller missförstånd uppstår minskar om ett gemensamt journalsystem används, vilket vi anser ökar patientsäkerheten. / Background: Good communication is prerequisite for good quality and patient safety in health care and when two different systems are used, we wondered what happens to the nursing documentation when the patient moves between different care units. Aim: The aim of the study was to examine whether the operation theatre nurses nursing care documentations in the operations planning system was reported on and can be found in the nursing journal. Method: A quality review of nursing care journal documentations was performed. Inclusion criteria was that the patient should have had an operation for at least three hours and aftercare for at least 24 hours, since it was the nursing care documentation that were done during the first day that were being quality reviewed. A total of 40 journals were examined. Results: Six keywords out of the operation planning system were examined, which are; skin status, operation position, drainage, KAD, dressing and skin sutures. Result of the study showed that the transfer of data was incomplete. In some cases it revealed that information was missing or altered when the patient was moved from the surgical ward to the care unit. Furthermore, it was found that the patient was moved more than once between different units. Conclusion: According to our study, we suggest that a common standardized journal with clear guidelines could make it easier to transfer the information between the different units. Clinical significance: Risk of error or misunderstandings are reduced in a common journal system, which we believe increases the patient safety.

As a consequence of the quick development of information technologies there has been a natural and gradual transition to the electronic data storage in nursing. The firstversions of the software application for such documentation have been developed in cooperation with professionals dealing with information technologies in the States of the European Union and it is the nurses who decide what the content of the nursing documentation will be. Therefore it is very important that the nurses {--} as the main users of this software {--} are actively involved in the creation process of the electronic nursing documentation. The advantage of introducing the electronic nursing documentation is filing of the important data about a client in the NIS where it is possible to retrieve the history anytime. In contrast to the traditional records, it is easier to read these records and it is not possible to cross any information out or lose it. Further, it saves nurses{\crq} time, it automatically records time and name of the medical worker who logged in the NIS and it meets the recommendations of the accreaditation standards. A qualitative research was used in the research part of this thesis. A semi-standardized interview with the head nurses and a structured interview with the senior staff nurses and ward sisters of the departments of internal medicine and of surginal wards of the selected hospitals were used to collect the data. Further, the method of content analysis was used to compare the electronic nursing documentation in the individua surveyed hospitals. The structured interview with the senior staff nurses and ward nurses was not done in the Hospital České Budějovice, a.s. because the programme of the electronic nursing documentation has not been started there. Case reports are created based on the gained interview results. The case reports comprise the research base on which categorized charts in which the research results are recorded are based. The research was conducted from January till June 2009. The surveyed group consists of head nurses, two senior staff nurses and two ward sisters of the departments of internal medicine and of surginal wards of the selected hospitals of the chosen regions of the Czech Republic. The research was conducted in the South Bohemian Region {--} the Hospital České Budějovice, a.s., the Pilsen Region {--} the Teaching Hospital Plzeň, the South Moravian Region {--} the Teaching Hospital Brno and the Vysočina Region {--} the Hospital Jihlava, p.o. Four research questions were defined at the beginning of our research in order to achieve our goal. The research questions 1: Does the electronic nursing documentation contain all phases of the nursing process (anamnesis, diagnosis, care plan and assessment)? The research questions 2: Is the nursing taxonomy a part of the electronic nursing documentation of each patient? How is the record of the nursing diagnosis created (crossing x filling in)? The research questions 3: Which nursing model has become the basis for the nursing anamnesis of the electronic nursing documentation? The research questions 4: Can the nurses take an active part in the preparation process of the electronic nursing documentation? All our research questions have been answered. We defined the following hypotheses based on the results of our research: H1: The electronic nursing documentation contains nursing anamnesis based on the Marjory Gordon{\crq}s conceptual model. H2: The nurses are offered to cooperate in the creation process of the electronic nursing documentation. H3: There is a taxonomy part in the nursing documentation. H4: The electronic nursing documentation covers all phases of the nursing process. We belive that the results of he