New Report: Equipped for Efficiency: Improving Nursing Care Through Technology

[rninformatics, DNP, RN]

Nurses prefer to work in hospitals where safety, quality, and their own job satisfaction are top priorities. This report examines how technology can improve both nurses' work environment and the level of care they provide.

Equipped for Efficiency: Improving Nursing Care Through Technology

Fran Turisco and Jared Rhoads, CSC

December 2008

Surveys show that nurses prefer to work in hospitals where safety, quality, and their own job satisfaction are top priorities. New technologies have the potential to improve the environment for nurses by helping them devote more of their time and expertise to caring for patients, rather than tracking down equipment, managing supplies, or locating clinicians and staff.

This report, a successor to the 2002 CHCF publication The Nursing Shortage: Can Technology Help?, examines hospitals' experiences with eight types of devices and applications: wireless communications, real-time location systems, delivery robots, workflow management systems, wireless patient monitoring, electronic medication administration with bar coding, electronic clinical documentation with clinical decision support, and interactive patient systems. Two other technologies-alarm/event messaging and biomedical device integration-are also discussed.

The results indicate that these systems have helped to create a better workplace for inpatient nurses, raising their job satisfaction while also contributing to improvements in care. All of the hospitals that shared their experience are planning to expand their use of these technologies, suggesting that the impact of such systems will continue to grow.

The complete report is attached.

EquippedForEfficiency.pdf

[Noxi]

Fabulous article, thanks for posting. I have never seen a hospital with an interactive patient system - I think that is genius and I would love to see it in action. Even just the ability for a patient to press a button to request a blanket, water -- seems like the system would pay for itself in amt time/money saved :) And it would be a great way for patients to look up health information and have other activity options besides staring at the television all day

[Communication_22]

Thanks you so much for such a great report, it's exciting to see how hospitals will be embracing integrated technology. I noticed that wireless communication is a major part of the equation. I know that Vocera Communications makes a fantastic badge that has been designed to enhance nurse communication.

[CarrieRNC]

Great article!! Ironically, we just had a meeting on our floor regarding RN dissatisfaction after a survey that was done earlier this year! A majority of the complaints come from having limited staff and spending too much time finding equipment/supplies! We are just in the process of going live with KBC, our floor will be rolling out next and I think this article will be a wonderful reference as we proceed. There are a lot of nurses that think the EHR will take time away from their patients and make more work for the nurse. I am so enthusiastic about it (I am doing gap analysis for OB) and I am trying to let them know that this WILL be a safer way to chart and also assist us with better patient care!!

Thank you again!!