Benefits, barriers, and facilitators of using speech recognition technology in nursing documentation and reporting: A cross‐sectional study

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Nursing reports are necessary for clinical communication and provide an accurate reflection of nursing assessments, care provided, changes in clinical status, and patient‐related information to support the multidisciplinary team to provide individualized care. Nurses always face challenges in recording and documenting nursing reports. Speech recognition systems (SRS), as one of the documentation technologies, can play a potential role in recording medical reports. Therefore, this study seeks to identify the barriers, benefits, and facilitators of utilizing speech recognition technology in nursing reports. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This cross‐sectional was conducted through a researcher‐made questionnaire in 2022. Invitations were sent to 200 ICU nurses working in the three educational hospitals of Imam Reza (AS), Qaem and Imam Zaman in Mashhad city (Iran), 125 of whom accepted our invitation. Finally, 73 nurses included the study based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. Data analysis was performed using SPSS 22.0. RESULTS: According to the nurses, “paperwork reduction” (3.96, ±1.96), “performance improvement” (3.96, ±0.93), and “cost reduction” (3.95, ±1.07) were the most common benefits of using the SRS. “Lack of specialized, technical, and experienced staff to teach nurses how to work with speech recognition systems” (3.59, ±1.18), “insufficient training of nurses” (3.59, ±1.11), and “need to edit and control quality and correct documents” (3.59, ±1.03) were the most common barriers to using SRS. As well as “ability to fully review documentation processes” (3.62, ±1.13), “creation of integrated data in record documentation” (3.58, ±1.15), “possibility of error correction for nurses” (3.51, ±1.16) were the most common facilitators. There was no significant relationship between nurses' demographic information and the benefits, barriers, and facilitators. CONCLUSIONS: By providing information on the benefits, barriers, and facilitators of using this technology, hospital managers, nursing managers, and information technology managers of healthcare centers can make more informed decisions in selecting and implementing SRS for nursing report documentation. This will help to avoid potential challenges that may reduce the efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity of the systems.