(Newswire.net — November 12, 2019) — Healthcare is slowly and gradually emerging as a tech-savvy dynamic system, mainly due to the role of Information Technology in clinical health and academia alike. The time is not far when Information Technology will relieve medical practitioners of their day-to-day complex activities. From scheduling timely appointments to entering a patient’s admission records or outpatient data on files manually, it is not unusual if technological advances help nurses perform their tasks more efficiently.
The criteria for educating nurses incorporate basic technology such as the use of a computer and smart devices for increasing efficiency and productivity in clinical situations. For doctors and nurses alike, information technology can not only help them integrate their soft skills into a high paced computerized system, but also minimize their day-to-day efforts and increase proactivity and productivity.
What are Registered Nurses saying?
Nurses who are already practicing in clinical medicine believe that the introduction of technology and the takeover of the ‘paper’ with a ‘computer’ can really help influence healthcare.
Consider Anthony Sartar, a certified and practicing nurse, acknowledges the discrepancies that nurses might face when technological advances are implemented in their daily tasks. They are, however, temporary, as the long-term benefits of incorporating basic technological use into nursing education are huge. Not only can a nurse learn how to handle databases and pagers, but also work efficiently and rapidly than before.
Pivot Health’s co-founder, Simon Frey believes that the use of technology in nursing certifications for new grads can open the doors to automation, an easier and simpler routine at clinical level, and of course, optimal and timely patient satisfaction as well.
How can Technology Help Nurses in their Careers?
Let’s throw some light on how technology can help modify a nurse’s career in the short as well as the long-term.
1) Electronic Paging Apps
While we agree that the paging system is highly efficient, there would be a time when pagers would either malfunction or fail to relay the mode or necessity of nursing requirements. As smartphones are a big part of our lives today, incorporating or introducing paging apps can help nurses stay on their toes while taking breaks or tending to non-serious patients.
By making an app with the exact options for clinical nursing tasks, a nurse can decide whether to rush immediately or consult a senior correspondent or supervisor for the help required. Also, with pagers, replying or reaching where your nursing facilities are required was a bit hard. You might be at the other end of the building and having lunch while you’re paged.
With an electronically smart paging system, a nurse can notify her correspondent regarding her whereabouts, therefore, reducing havoc and chaos in the rushing process.
2) Electronic Health Information System
Long gone are the days when you’d have to check with the storeroom for a decade-old file of a patient who turned up for a follow-up years later. An electronic health record system can enable nurses to store clinical data and history of the patient onto a confidential and access-only database.
Moreover, you can also add the kind of medications a patient’s receiving by adding them in the database and checking if it has any side effects with the tests or prescription advised by a senior doctor or caregiver.
An electronic health record systemallows nurses to keep a check on every facet of a patient’s care provided by the hospital. Moreover, this allows doctors and other medical personnel to communicate with each other and conduct decisions based on readily available patient data.
3) Pharmaceutical Dispensaries
Nurses who are responsible for drug delivery-and-retrieval systems can utilize the technological advances in the pharmaceutical dispensaries as well. By running prescriptions onto a computer, a nurse can check its authority instead of confirming with the prescribing doctor in person. Moreover, by flashing the drug’s bar codes onto the automated dispensing machines, a nurse can easily provide the correct medications with the right dosages to patients.
4) Understanding Medical Appliances
Technology and science are crawling deeper into our healthcare system, and soon, every medical device will be ruled by the world of automation and artificial intelligence in no time. Today, hospitals are currently using electronic BP cuffs and thermometers for checking vitals in the outpatient department, or electronic monitors for checking a patient’s pulse rate, temperature, resting and mean blood pressure in the inpatient facilities.
These are the basics of any patient’s clinical checkup, and reading or understanding an electronic monitor should be included in the basics of nursing education. Our hospitals, however, are not limited to basic electronic devices.
Monitoring an ICU involves keeping a check on ventilators or infusion delivery systems (such as those for dialysis or plasmapheresis) that requires nurses to be updated regarding their technological components.
Understanding their technical brains can be a bit hard, especially if a nurse didn’t receive education about such high-tech electronic devices in the first place. Since the requirement for these electronic devices is growing, it’s only a matter of time that every nurse will be capable of understanding and adjusting the complexities of a ventilator or infusion delivery system.
5) PDAs and Wall-Mounted Electronic Assistants
Imagine walking into a hospital mounted with wall-computers and tablets for free access to information about medical conditions, and drugs with their indications, adverse effects and contraindications as well. A personal digital assistant (PDA) is an example of such software that can help nurses update their skills and consequently, run thorough checks on patients without bothering or waiting for a doctor.
The Final Verdict
Similarly, since the database can store lab results and patient’s clinical history, a lot of time will be saved in running to a doctor and coming back with a chart for filing the patient’s data. The time that is saved can actually be implemented in personalizing healthcare for a patient. Patients need a solid human connection when hospitalized, and a technological health information system helps them connect with their caregivers on a personal level.