The embracing of Health Information Technology (HIT) by hospitals is viewed as one mechanism to
mitigate the ever-growing healthcare supply and demand gap, reduce medical errors, increase efficiency,
improve quality of care and automate business processes. This has led to many hospitals investing large
sums of money in the hope that HIT can help hospitals achieve this goal.
The problem, however, is that similar to other industries that have undertaken this journey towards
embracing Information Technology (IT), hospitals have not been very successful and have not achieved
the expected benefits of IT. One of the major contributing factors to the high failure rate of IT
implementation within the healthcare sector is user acceptance. The main objective of this study was to
determine the perception and preparedness of clinical stakeholders to adopt a paperless environment and
to determine if the clinical stakeholders were equipped with the necessary skills to be able to function
within a paperless environment.
Due to the nature of the study, a quantitative approach was used to gather information using a
questionnaire. The private hospital that agreed to participate in the study is from the eThekwini
municipality. A total of 300 questionnaires were handed out to the nursing clerk at the hospital and a
total of 102 questionnaires were successfully answered giving the researcher a response rate of 34%.
The findings of the study indicate that both perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use by clinical
stakeholders are enablers to HIT usage while resistance to change is an inhibitor to HIT usage. The
findings also indicate that both related knowledge and perceived compatibilities have a positive effect on
the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use respectively. / Thesis (M.Com.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2010.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ukzn/oai:http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za:10413/9832 |
| Date | 30 October 2013 |
| Creators | Ramharuk, Vikash. |
| Contributors | Marimuthu, Ashley. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en_ZA |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
Page generated in 0.0027 seconds