Introduction

That there is resistance to the adoption of this new technology should not surprise. There is often a fair amount of inertia within any organization when it comes to organizational change in general, and rolling out new technology in particular. Structural inertia has long been studied in organizational change literature – people become accustomed to doing things a certain way, they have fallen into routines, and many people really do not like being broken out of their comfort zones (Hannan & Freeman, 1984). This phenomenon can be observed on the macro level, but it will also manifest on the micro level, with respect to individual changes that are non-structural in nature. A good example is the rolling out of new technology. There are a few things that a nurse leader can do to ensure that the rollout of the new electronic health record system is successful.

Overview

Those who do this for a living have a pretty good overview of how to overcome resistance. While not specific to the nursing setting, Day (2016) rightly points out that leadership needs to be able to highlight the value of the new technology up front, in order to overcome resistance based on \"why is this needed.\" Once there is some understanding that the change is needed, it will be a little bit easier – though not necessarily problem-free – to roll out the new technology. There needs to be champions in management, which is where the nurse... That plan should be based on the principles that Rogers (2003) laid out.
Rogers (2003) starts with that the point above – that the proponents of the new technology must be able to demonstrate that it is better than the existing way of doing things. An interesting dynamic to this is that this benefit might be obvious to management (i.e. it makes the business more profitable) but that won\'t matter to the nurses – they need the benefit conveyed to them in their context (i.e. how it benefits them specifically).

The next step that Rogers has identified is that it needs to be compatible. This should have been assured during the vetting stage as discussed in prior papers; for the implementation aspect it is only important that the compatibility point is explained to the nurses so that they understand how the new technology is aligned with the values and missions of the organization. In other words, if what the new technology does is poorly aligned with the values and mission of the organization, then there is a much lower likelihood than the nurses will drop their resistance.

The next step as identified by Rogers is simplicity. At the end of the day, the technology has to be usable by the people who are supposed to use it. Makes sense, right? This is why there needs to be a nurse involved during the technology selection process – if there is not then it is conceivable that the technology chosen will…