Everyday Nurse problems

[babarfirasat]

Hello everyone, I'm a postgraduate student and I'm researching on the technological problems that nurses go through everyday at their jobs. My project is to innovate a problematic technology. This could be the devices or equipment they use. Do any of you have problems that needs fixing or could be better used or organised?

[Cat365]

I want a "sticky" BP cuff. When a problem in the ER keeps moving around and the O2 sensor keeps falling off. I go get a sticky one. When the BP cuff gets wonky I either get no reading or wrong readings until I go adjust it. No my patient's BP is probably not REALLY 80/40, the cuff likely is loose/slipped sideways or otherwise off kilter, but what if it really is. I need to know that..

I meant "patient" not "problem" but I decided that maybe autocorrect was more honest than I was, so I'm leaving it.

[Green Tea, RN]

Anything innovative? I don't need those. After all, they are expensive. If a manager has the money to buy innovative equipments, I hope she will purchase more basic equipments instead.

When I was working on med-surg, it was a daily occurrence to see a broken equipment. When the VS machine in patient's room was not working, I had to go find and get portable one. When an ice machine was out of order, I had to go to the other side of the floor to get ice water. When I needed a bladder scanner because my patient could not pee, I had to go to another floor to borrow one because each floor did not own one. For post surgical patients, being not able to void is nothing rare.

[klone, MSN, RN]

....

Is it so??? Really? GrnTea??

[canoehead, BSN, RN]

New efficiencies tend to make things easier for other departments, but slow nursing down. Scanning meds, printing off chart sheets with the patient's name instead of just grabbing the form, its all adding up to 30 seconds here and there, that becomes an extra hour of work.

[monolithwolf21]

Probably a big problem is the cost of keeping up with later software/equipment, especially for merger hospitals in a rural or poorer area trying to survive. I realize upgrading is a huge cost. Where I have worked the technology is about 12 years old or more. A lot of times I would find myself back on paper MAR or my work wouldn't be saved. It crashed a lot during the night & I remember sometimes it wasn't back on for the next couple days till the fixed it. It wasn't a bad system when it worked though.

[monolithwolf21]

Pretty much the same deal here...