Nursing information systems: Expected and realized organizational benefits from the perspective of nurse executives

A descriptive correlational survey was used to assess Nurse Executives perceptions of Nursing Information systems which include: benefit expectation, benefit realization, and perceived gap between expected and realized organizational benefits. A random national sample of nurse executives was selected (n = 299, return rate 20%). Exploratory factor analysis revealed the presence of four complex factors: operational control, organizational viability, fiscal accountability, and service quality. Nurse executives have the highest expectations for operational control benefits, and, this is the category of benefits most consistently realized. Nurse executives have the lowest expectations of fiscal accountability benefits. Gaps between expected and realized outcomes were shown to be best measured by asking the question of gap directly. Backward stepwise regression was used to assess the relationship of nurse executive experience, nurse executive knowledge, organizational size, organizational complexity, organizational history, technological complexity, sum of applications, vendor support, departmental ownership, management support, and nursing information system specialist on the factor scores for operational control, organizational viability, fiscal accountability, and service quality. In the final equation, a significant percentage of variation in expected operational control, expected organizational viability, expected service quality, realized organizational viability, realized service quality, realized fiscal accountability, operational control gap and service quality gap were explained. The only independent variables contributing to the variation were technological complexity, number of applications, departmental ownership and presence of a nursing information system specialist.