"Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?"

- Thomas J. Watson, American entrepreneur and founder of IBM

Although computerized healthcare information is a good cost control budget strategy, there exists one big hurdle to it being adequately used by most organizations. The biggest hurdle to computerized healthcare information system is one that organizations very often overlook, and that is the capability of its staff to use new technology. As you are aware, there is a considerable segment of nurses who have had little or no experience with computers. Let's listen to a conversation between two nurses on the use of technology in nursing.

Very often, organizations provide only piecemeal training on how to use new technologies. This is not of much help to nurses who have little or no experience using computers, and learning to prepare nursing documentation on a computer can be a real challenge for technology illiterate or challenged nurses. Without proper training and support, the transition from manual to automated documentation can be a nightmare for some of these nurses. Investing in expensive technology is a good budgeting strategy. However, organizations need to implement this strategy with the strategy of training its staff to use the newly installed technology.

The use of technology speeds up work like maintaining and updating records. However, if this technology is not used to the optimum, then it is actually of no benefit to the organization. The cost of training staff is minimal when compared to the cost of not using the expensive technology installed. Therefore, training and educating staff is another important budget strategy that healthcare organizations adopt to control costs. As technology continues to advance and evolve, so must your skills and competencies. The organization should ideally provide training to its employees when new technologies are put in place. However, if you take the initiative of learning how to use new technology, the benefit will be yours. In this modern age, even a new piece of vital sign equipment can be a challenge to use accurately and efficiently; so do all you can to learn about new technologies.

The organization’s strategy of training staff also works well towards retaining staff. As you know, there is no shortage of available nursing positions. If nurses don’t feel comfortable using the new technology, they’ll seek employment with another facility. Nurse managers need to keep this in mind, since this will add to the cost of selecting and recruiting new employees. It therefore makes more sense to train and retain the current staff.

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