Making Nursing More Efficient With Updated Technology
Making Nursing More Efficient With Updated Technology
Nurses are the linchpin of hospital care delivery and represent a critical and costly resource. Maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of nurses is essential to the integrity of hospital function and the promotion of safe patient care. Many hospitals understand this and are embracing their nurses and appointing leaders. When hospitals embrace nurse leadership across departments and disciplines, they are better able to design safe and effective systems for the delivery of a care. An impediment to efficiency for many nurses is medical data collection and synchronization. For this reason,medical device connectivity and interoperabilitya critical component of streamlining processes for nurses
Investment in technology is one area that benefits from nurse involvement in decision-making. These technologies of course affect the IT staff but they affect nurses, too, because many require them not only to learn the new technology, but also to integrate it effectively. Wireless medical devices are one example of a new technology that affects both the IT staff and the nursing staff. The IT staff has to figure out whether or not they have the infrastructure to support the wireless device and what happens to data collection when that device is roaming wirelessly. If the network drops the signal it is important to know whether the vitals are still being collected and whether the device can properly handle patient association during that time. If a nurse were involved with decision-making about these wireless devices, these potential issues would be addressed. The hospital could make proper adjustments to the installation or possibly avoid the expense of purchasing a device - or at least a certain version of a device - that is ahead of its time and therefore not helpful to building the right environment for safe and effective patient care and integrated caregiver workflows.
Another example is facilities design. Hospitals are often expanding or remodeling. Frontline nurses can provide great insight into the design of the hospital environment and provide input on relatively minor but important physical changes within a space. Simply involving nurse leaders and frontline staff early on in the process of facility design can improve the overall quality of patient care.
The bottom line is that nursing involvement with decisions related to all operational areas of the hospital helps ensure the highest quality of patient care and safety and can help hospitals avoid spending resources on solutions that don't deliver the best patient care environment and best work environment for the nursing staff. A holistic approach is best whereby nurses, technology, and work processes come together in new physical space to produce a safer care environment with maximum efficiency.