Integrating Scholarly Evidence and Personal Experience in Health Information Technology-Enabled Evidence-Based Patient-Care Practices: Challenges, Opportunities, and Outcomes

Abstract

Scholarly evidence and personal experience are two prominent sources of knowledge informing patient-care practices in hospitals. In evidence-based patient-care practices, jointly applying both forms of knowledge is challenging due to the divergent preferences of administrative personnel versus frontline providers towards these knowledge sources and the limited understanding of how to combine these knowledge sources effectively despite divergent preferences. Health information technologies (HITs) tend to influence this challenge by simultaneously imprinting a standardized practice based on scholarly evidence while also allowing workarounds based on personal experience. We apply a theoretical framework, integrating cognitive information processing theory and agency theory, to the context of HIT-enabled evidence-based patient-care practices to investigate the circumstances that enable joint consideration of scholarly evidence and personal experience in value-adding versus value-depleting ways in these practices. Our findings reveal the salience of outcome uncertainty and of the prior stored knowledge of administrative personnel versus frontline providers in enabling joint considerations of the two types of knowledge and the value-adding versus value-depleting outcomes that result.