Using Dooyeweerd's aspects to understand down to earth issues in use of medical records

Khojah, GMA

Abstract

This research is about experience of using electronic medical records (EMR). Chapter 1
introduces and justifies the main research question “How can Down To Earth issues that are
important in uses of EMR be studied by using Dooyeweerd's aspects?”

Down To Earth (DTE) issues are those meaningful in daily uses of patient medical records
rather than those meaningful for management, ICT suppliers and academics.

A survey of the literature (Chapter 2) reveals that high level issues rather than DTE issues are
mostly discussed. Even where the literature mentions DTE issues, there is a need for three
research activities
1-reveal DTE issues to bring to light those which are significant and important
2-uncover the hidden issues and the reasons for these hidden issues.
3-classify the issues to identify which of these are the most significant

After considering a range Information Systems (IS) Theories, Dooyeweerd’s aspects emerged
as a suitable theoretical framework to reveal, uncover and classify DTE issues (Chapter 3).
Interpretivism was the philosophical lens of choice given that it primarily seeks meaning and
insights, much in keeping with this research which looks for the meaningful issues of
Medical Record (MR) users and aims to gain insights into DTE issues of MR uses. So an
interpretive approach is used (Chapter 4). Users of MR are interviewed and Dooyeweerd’s
aspects are employed to analyse the transcripts and a selection of excerpts from papers
(Chapter 5).
Using the results of aspectual analysis of these texts, five quantitative and qualitative
comparisons are made of the following (Chapter.6)

The comparison of hospitals
The comparison of paper and electronic records.
The comparison of nurses
The comparison of nationalities
The research has three main findings (Chapter 7).
1-The meaningful DTE issues for medical record users are different from the meaningful
issues discussed in the literature.
2-Aspectual analysis enables us to reveal, uncover and classify DTE issues that are
meaningful for medical record users.
3- Each type of user tends to have a unique aspectual profile.
Chapter.8 discusses limitations of the research and how this research might contribute to
practice methodology and theory. The research contributes to practice of designing and
evaluating EMR systems. Furthermore the research could help to generate a theory of
medical records. Also the research offers a method for analysing DTE issues for other
researchers in other sectors.

Citation

Khojah, G. (in press). Using Dooyeweerd's aspects to understand down to earth issues in use of medical records. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Acceptance Date: Oct 30, 2018
• Deposit Date: Nov 28, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 28, 2018