We investigated the shortening or abolishing shift report as the effect of implementing electronic nursing and medical records and its side effects at 10 Japanese hospitals. The majority of staff nurses accepted this change, but both directors and staff nurses recognized the risk of insufficient collection and communication of patient information, difficulties of understanding the risks and matters of patients not under care and an increase in time to collect information from the computer before starting patient care. Directors should carefully evaluate and reduce the negative influences associated with changing or eliminating the traditional shift report.