Futuristic Cyber Nursing

[Huganurse]

What do you think about this as the future of nursing/health care? Arrive at work and your ID tag automatically is detected, your are clocked in as you walk through the door. Once at the patients bedside, you can get chemistry, blood sugars, hematology with a small hand held device that requires no blood draw, you just place the sensor on the patients skin and viola you have auto results, then you do your assessment, of course the patient is being monitored by automatic vital signs, you do your assessment narrative verbally into your hand held device that converts it to readable notes on the computers main system, no x ray --digital imaging only!, You need the doc for orders so you tell your hand held to get a hold of the Doc. and insta-presto he is viewing the patient and conversing with the patient from the docs hand held and verbalizes the orders into the hand held which goes directly to pharmacy, which fills the orders automatically and immediatly then dispenses the med in such a way as to avoid any human error directly to the patients room for your supervision, while at home you think of a great way to deal with a patient delema, instead of losing sleep or making a call you can access all patient records from your home and verbalize your input for the patients plan of care. Of course most diagnosis will have a system for auto care plans upon pt. admission. Patients have a bedside computer to access educational tools and progress of their recovery or stay. OK call me a techno geek, but I see this as a way to spend more time with our patients and less time doing paperwork. I am sure though that corporate will see it as a way to increase the number of patients we take care of. Oh did I fail to mention the self monitoring and emptying drainage systems for all those body fluids we deal with? Or how about IV infusions that so not require invasive needle sticks? I could go on and on.

I have been a strong proponant in the past about home care nurses getting lap tops and using intranet to do our job and since the mid 90's I've heard YES we are going to do that but have yet to actually see it. I know some hospitals use computers at the bedside but that is a far cry from what I'm talking about here. I also know there is a rehab hospital planned to be built in AL that will be close to what I see as our future in nursing. What do you think?