Assessment of Nurses and Midwives Records Management System at the Liberia Board for Nursing and Midwifery

Abstract

Adequate human resources for health remain a major challenge to the world especially in the wake of increased burden of diseases as well as worst situation of maternal child mortality in Sub Sahara Africa and some part of Asia. Recently, most international organizations including WHO, UNFPA, etc. have recognized nurses and midwives as the most affordable and available healthcare providers that reached almost every aspect of society be it rural or urban communities. In some instances, adequate numbers of nurses and midwives have been referred to as the major element to meeting the health component of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) such as the Universal Health Coverage. In fact, nurses and midwives constitute more than 50% of health workforce across the globe as such need to be properly documented to ascertain the numbers and categories for adequate decision making and placement. The aim of this study was to assess the current records management system at the Liberia Board for Nursing and Midwifery (LBNM), to ascertain challenges faced in utilizing the current system and subsequently develop a requirement specification for a new records management system. Stages one and two of the system development life cycle were employed to conduct this study. A census was done since there were fewer staff (13 persons) who are directly involved with services provision at the office. On the other hand, 43 nurses and midwives who visited the board office during the period of the study were interviewed to get their views on the services received. Almost 92% of staff participants pointed out poor handwriting and 84% cited incomplete forms as challenges faced in collecting data. Additionally, more than 92% of staff named lack of storage space as a challenge, while shortage of forms accounted for 85% of challenges faced with data storage. Moreover, 92% of staff also highlighted misplaced folders as major challenge with information retrieval. Most importantly, all staff participants cited inaccurate data as the University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh v major challenge in reporting. More than 69% of staff cited manual data collection method as the means for collecting information at the board. Nurses and midwives on the other hand highlighted difficulty understanding forms, long distances travel, high cost of transportation and delay in processing documents as challenges faced in utilizing services. These results indicate that the manual system at the board is associated with challenges including inaccurate data, inadequate information, etc. on nurses and midwives at the board. Therefore, the Liberia Board for Nursing and Midwifery needs to adopt a web based electronic records management system to ease the current challenges faced by staff as well as nurses and midwives in utilizing the system