Equipped for Efficiency: Improving Nursing Care Through Technology

Managing the complex care needs of hospitalized patient population is a national concern. Effective collaboration and teamwork is essential in providing safe hospital care. Most recently, there has been a greater emphasis on interdisciplinary care. It is well documented and accepted that interdisciplinary care represents best practice in terms of treatment planning and care for patients but integration of it into workflow is challenging. In an attempt to address this Interdisciplinary Plan of Care (IPOC) rounds were trialed.

The macro- level coordination mechanisms being used in Unit B that were not used in Unit A included mostly included organization and communication and they work as a team, forming units in various departments. Organization design is the arrangement of responsibilities, authority, and flow of information within an organization, resulting in its organization structure (Burns, Braley, Weiner & Shortell, 2012). Macro level coordination is where the focus of analysis is on the overall coordination needs and structural approaches to address those need (Burns, Braley, Weiner & Shortell, 2012). In unit A communication among the nurses, therapists, social workers, residents, and attending physicians regarding patient care is poor, and relationships among them are strained (Burns, Braley, Weiner & Shortell, 2012). In unit B nursing staff on the unit are organized into teams, with each team responsible for assigned patients from admission to discharge, the house staff in medicine in the hospital also are organized into teams, and except when beds are not available (Burns, Braley, Weiner & Shortell, 2012). Task interdependence among staff A included patient care units Nurses, physicians, and other health professionals in unit A consisted of discipline compared to unit B where conduct interdisciplinary rounds were not something team A took seriously. Differences between the effectively functioning Unit B and the chaotic Unit A are seen by many administrators and health care

Nursing knowledge will be included in the shaping of practice for prevention and health promotion as policy is being made. This will in turn produce better patient centered outcomes to manage disease. Patients will receive better assessments, and treatment that is genetic based for accuracy, and predictability for disease, and improve holistic care.

Patient care teams were dealing with over-occupancy of up to 110 percent, inefficiencies associated with manual processes, limited access to patient information and open-ended communication methods. These issues led to care delays, a lack of team collaboration and inaccurate discharge scheduling, all comprimising the patient.

In the past, our healthcare distribution system predicated its payments solely on the number of accommodations provided and not on the quality of care distributed to patients. As a result, patients might receive redundant tests, medication errors, or accommodations that might not ameliorate their health – and may cost them more in copayments or coinsurance. As required by the Affordable Care Act, Health and Human Services (HHS) launched several initiatives to link payments more proximately with quality outcomes and promote value-predicated care. These reforms promote value over volume and ascertain that care is better coordinated across the healthcare distribution system (Health IT, 2013). As a result the government is looking to influence innovation and best practices to enhance administration, quality and patient engagement, while securing protection and minimizing expenses (Nir Menachemi and Taleah H. Collum, 2011). This influential innovation is in direct response to the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009. Therefore in this paper one will evaluate the current state of the infrastructure in workflow and processes; identify the existing gaps and issues within the environment, provide solutions for improvement in association with the present gaps – zero cost and limitless budget, and recognize current technology that can change the current health care infrastructure. This evaluation will display the current state of the

In the provision of care for patients at the hospital and in clinics in Skokie, Illinois, different technology is used to ensure that adequate and quality treatment is offered. This technology has enhanced the efficiency in which medical treatment is offered. It not only reduces the time for delivering services but also gives accurate services than a human being who is prone to error (Shafiee, 2015).

This writer believes that the nurse’s perspective of technology greatly influences whether or not the nurse approves the use of technology. This writer has heard from multiple nurses that the writer works with that technology has changed nursing and some of them believes that it negatively influences nursing. Having only been a nurse for a year and a half this author only knows about using technology in the authors nursing practice. With nurses being uncomfortable with technology, there is less of a likelihood that the nurse would use it in his or her practice (Kuo, Liu, & Ma, 2013, p. 9). Technology is here to stay in the healthcare field, so unfortunately the nurses need to be comfortable using technology. There has been a few instances

The whole goal using a health information technology (HIT) is to improve workflow: to save time, to reduce cost, improve efficiency, quality and safety of patient care. The positive impact of good design on workflow is imperceptible: it is fast, simple and smooth. However, technology with bad design creates detour on workflow. It could be complicated and slow that take too much attention. Moreover, it wastes resource, consume a lot of time and endangers patient safety. The workflow design should tie with the skill level of the healthcare workers and fit the size of the healthcare organization. So whenever we think about Technology in healthcare, the design of the workflow should take precedence. Well-structured and organized HIT processes

Teamwork and collaboration play a huge role in patient care. The hospital and its team must function as a single unit in order to provide the best care for its patients. One of the biggest issues I witnessed during my clinical rotations was the lack of collaboration and communication between the nurses and the physicians. Yes, the nurses would read the notes left by the physicians, but when they saw something that they disagreed with, rather than approaching the physician with their issue, they found ways to go about the issue without having to inform the physician. By doing this, the physician will never learn that he/she did something incorrectly or inefficiently, thereby leading them to repeat the same behavior in the future. If the next

Without multidisciplinary and interdepartmental communication, it is difficult to understand the big picture—what is actually happening to the patient during the episode of hospitalization and what the impact on the organization is. Teams led by department leads can brainstorm data for better ways to communicate and recommend preventive strategies.

The nature of healthcare processes and the systems supporting them is to grow more separate and siloed over time, as each often have unique roles in a healthcare organization. Breaking down the process barriers and creating a highly unified, collaborative healthcare information technologies platform is critical for any healthcare provider to continually deliver excellent service to patients (Bernstein, McCreless, Côté, 2007). The challenges of integrating healthcare processes and their supporting systems together include managing often highly diverse data formats and definitions of database records (Abu-Samaha, 2003); high

Patient care technology is becoming increasing helpful for the nursing world. Throughout the years, technology has transformed the way information is delivered through nursing care. (Hughes, 2014) Most of these new technology machines help reduce the errors made through nursing and decrease the amount of assessment mistakes made by nurses. Before pulse oximetry, nursing assessments had to include temperature and color of the patient’s skin and follow up with an ABG to confirm simple results. (Powell-Cope, 2014) Since the invention of the pulse oximetry, nurses now can put a strap on a finger and a number will appear reading the oxygen level in the patients blood. Barcode administration is a strong example of how communication devices have help to increase patient safety. (Powell-Cope, 2014) Before barcode scanning, nurses made duplicate patient arm bands and one was left at the medication cart. The nurse would scan one bar code at the medication cart and then one on the patients arm. (Powell-Cope, 2014) The concern with this was the face to face, positive patent identification was bypassed and increased patient medication errors. With arm bands being placed on the patients arm and medication administration consist of selecting the patient in the Pyxis, then scanning the patient at the bedside before administrating the medication has decreased our medication errors.

This paper will discuss the significance of using modern technology into nursing practice for several reasons. In the health care settings where information shared immediately, it is important to have the ability and skills to use the advanced modern technological attainment in order to deliver safe and qualified client care. Modern technology plays crucial role in reducing medical errors, simplifying and sharing of accurate and the latest information to facilitate health care provider’s job, analyzing diagnostic and laboratory results. Nursing informatics facilitates the integration of data, information and knowledge to support patients, nurses and other providers in their decision making in all roles and setting. In this paper, I am going to explore how modern technology has provided in nursing practice; specifically I will discuss how our learned skills from my school are helping us in recovering and analyzing information in order to provide excellent patient care. I am also going to explain the importance of medical abbreviations and my personal experience about medical abbreviations during my clinical.

The medical and healthcare industry is both sensitive and complicated in so many ways. Every medical practitioner or clinician looks for practical and efficient solutions, automated systems, and effective workflow management in order to reduce clinical risk and improve patient care significantly. However, the healthcare industry today is facing several challenges that add to the increased cost and inefficiencies in the system.

Technology is defined as “the application of specific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in the industry” (Oxford dictionary). Everywhere you look you see technology- cell phone, printer, computer, flash drive, laptop, plus much more that you use daily is technology. For everyone alive today, they have lived with technology, but the technology was not always here, especially in the nursing field. In the late 1950s very, few hospitals began to use computers to keep their accounting records. It was not until the mid-1970s administrators started allowing the use of technology to slowly enter the workplace. Technology is being used daily and has been used for many years in all aspects of life, but in the nursing field it has helped in several ways including patient care, making nurses jobs easier, and improved the devices being used.