The Systems Development Life Cycle

Colina Hill Discussion – Week 9 Initial Post

The Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a great tool to use when making decisions and changes within a company. This cycle includes Analysis, Design, Implementation, Test, and Maintenance. Each of these steps has an important part to play in successful implementation but, it is equally important to have the right team working on each of these phases. Nurses should be a primary part of the team since they use these systems and directly work with patients more than other healthcare providers.

Analysis: Requirements for the system are teased out from a detailed study of the business needs of the organization(Mcgonigle & Mastrian, 2015). During this phase workflow and business practices are examined. Having a nurse part of this phase is vital because the true issues can be identified as nurse is hands-on seeing and working. This gives a nurse a unique perspective. A key to the successful implementation of health information technology (health IT) is to recognize its impact on both clinical and administrative workflow (Workflow Assessment for Health IT Toolkit, n.d.). Not allowing a nurse to be part of this phase can lead to the wrong issues being addressed or missing ones that need to be addressed.