Electronic documentation has stolen the human touch from nursing.

Nurses General Nursing

Published

There is always a COMPUTER between me and my patient. We are required to scan meds to patient bracelets, enter admission and assessment date into the COMPUTER , text doctors and other departments from the COMPUTER.

I am looking @ the almighty COMPUTER much more than my patient. A major facility I worked for mandated that during the lengthy admission documentation, nurses ASK the patient if it was all right if they looked at the COMPUTER during the process!

They were, of course , aware that we must look at the COMPUTER more than the patient. The solution was to ask the patient for permission??? I feel typing is more valued than any people/ assessment skills I may have developed over the years. Data entry is the name of the game now.

I would so much prefer touching my patients than that damn COMPUTER!:twocents:

Computer use and short staffing! Being required to do more with less. None of this makes for best practice, much less, personal care.

Management seems to prefer nurses who dart around and barrel up and down halls--Tasking. Nurses are very often simply tasking. Nurses very seldom have the opportunity to provide thorough nursing care.

Specializes in Utilization Management.

My unit's solution to this? We must do admissions with the old paper admission/discharge packets...and then go back later and enter the information into the computer. :rolleyes:

I don't mind the computer, I just hate having to wheel this huge WOW everywhere I go. I work on a Rehab unit with semi-private rooms, so wheeling this thing in every time I have to give meds is a pain in the butt as each patient has a walker, w/c, BSC, overbed table, and visitor chair.

Specializes in Emergency.

The EMR systems that I use at work actually make take less time and provide more time to care for patients. I'm not in the hospital though but in an Urgent Care. No fishing for charts, or filling out and filing stacks of paperwork. Instead, everything is at easy access when the patient comes in or calls. Typing is faster than writing it out. Therefore, I am able to spend more time on patient needs. I love it!

Specializes in Emergency.
My unit's solution to this? We must do admissions with the old paper admission/discharge packets...and then go back later and enter the information into the computer. :rolleyes:

I don't mind the computer, I just hate having to wheel this huge WOW everywhere I go. I work on a Rehab unit with semi-private rooms, so wheeling this thing in every time I have to give meds is a pain in the butt as each patient has a walker, w/c, BSC, overbed table, and visitor chair.

Hopefully your unit will come up with a better solution to work for your nurses. Seems like your having to do the work twice which is taking even more time away :(

Specializes in Utilization Management.
Hopefully your unit will come up with a better solution to work for your nurses. Seems like your having to do the work twice which is taking even more time away :(

Not to mention all the double and triple charting that occurs when we actually chart the assessments in the program. It's a major flaw of the system my hospital recently implemented. For example, "right-sided weakness" will end up being charted under the Neuro tab, the MS tab, and the Functionality tab. While it is pertinent information for all three, it's just excessive. :rolleyes:

Say what? There is a patient there? Pretty soon the computer will be equipped with a deposit only ATM and the patient can just feed his money into it before the assessment. "Thank you, come again."

Specializes in Emergency.
Say what? There is a patient there? Pretty soon the computer will be equipped with a deposit only ATM and the patient can just feed his money into it before the assessment. "Thank you, come again."

Or even worse like in the movie idiocracy!

Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

Are there any studies out there yet that help us understand this from the patient's perspective? I would really like to know if the patient and family feel that our priority is on "nursing computers" now. Maybe, like the PP pointed out, asking the patient for permission is misleading - but it seems that we could offset some of the negative perceptions with careful explanations about what we're doing. Could it be offset by positioning the computer so that we can maintain eye contact with the patient?

Question to everyone - can you be a 'good nurse' these days without good computer skills? It would seem that any additional time spent (clicking & typing) on the computer means less time to actually interact with the patient. So it would seem to be a logical conclusion; a nurse's computer expertise does have an impact on the quality of care we are able to deliver... :confused:

Specializes in L & D; Postpartum.

I've been saying that ever since we started our computer system Watch Child. In addition to that, for our non-ob gyn patients, we have to use Clin-Doc, and the admission on one of those takes over an hour! Saves time, my patootie!

Specializes in Telemetry, OB, NICU.

Umm.. I guess I don't understand it. What does computer documentation have to do with patient contact/touch? If it wasn't computer, it would be a paper that you are looking more than the patient. You need to distinguish patient contact from documentation. We don't touch the patient and document at the same time any way, no matter what type documentation we're using.

The EMR systems that I use at work actually make take less time and provide more time to care for patients. I'm not in the hospital though but in an Urgent Care. No fishing for charts, or filling out and filing stacks of paperwork. Instead, everything is at easy access when the patient comes in or calls. Typing is faster than writing it out. Therefore, I am able to spend more time on patient needs. I love it!

Same here. I love the EMR system. When our network is down and I have to use the paper charts, I feel like I'm in the stone age. But then again, I'm pretty computer saavy, so I get that some people aren't.

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