Workforce issues
Lightening the (cognitive) load The physicality of a role as a nurse is one thing, but mentally it’s perhaps even more challenging. The cognitive load of having to always be mentally one step ahead of the next task – while dealing with the unpredictability of patients and their conditions – can become a real trigger for feelings of stress and anxiety. Most days I would be running on adrenaline
and after work I would feel myself crash. Something as simple as being able to use
technology to provide a prompt for an action could lighten that load. This technology would take away some of the mental burden and help stop nurses feeling quite so overwhelmed. The good news is evolved nurse call
technology can provide that. It’s smart, with the ability to interact with other medical devices and software. It provides the nurse with a vital tool to help closely monitor a patient and can support workflow management. Prompts to remind nurses of routine tasks can be automated. For example, the clinician can create an alert for tasks such as dispensing medication or when a patient needs to be turned to prevent pressure sores. This takes the burden away from nurses and ensures patient care is mapped. Even something as seemingly simple as
arranging for a porter to take a patient into surgery can be time consuming, but this could also be automated. An alert can be set and sent directly to the porter. The same form of alert can be created to remind a nurse when a patient’s medication is ready so they can be discharged.
Reconnecting nurses to invisible patients The move from ward to single-occupant rooms in a smart hospital provides patients with greater levels of privacy, but it also creates care challenges. Where a nurse could once look over a ward and see all their patients, at a glance, private
rooms provide an additional physical barrier to overcome. Patients can also feel disconnected as they can go for longer periods of time without seeing a member of staff. Staff themselves can feel disconnected too. But through technology, they can both be reconnected. By integrating the nurse call system with the medical devices connected to the patient, such as an infusion pump or patient monitor, technology can become a clinician’s ‘eyes and ears’. For example, if a patient’s blood pressure suddenly spikes, an alarm can be raised to alert the medical team via a handheld device, or through a smartphone iOS or Android App. The status of a patient can be recorded in
near real time and viewed from a dashboard. This means, still, at a glance nurses can check up on the whole ward, despite each patient now being housed behind walled partitions. The technology is changing how nurses work
and how patients receive care – creating a support system not just for patients, but also nurses.
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Reducing sensory stress overload Hospital wards are noisy. Much has been said about the impact of nuisance alarms on clinicians. Now technology is being adapted to be more discreet and less intrusive to patients and healthcare workers. Previously, a patient would press a button
which would trigger an alarm that could be heard by all patients and all staff. It was disruptive. Now, with new systems in place, a patient can request help from their own smartphone device or a handset, which raises an alarm, not throughout the wards, but directly to the devices of people responsible for their care. This creates a more calming environment for patients and helps eliminate alarm fatigue among staff. Being a nurse is a physical job. I never
recorded the number of steps I would travel up and down the ward each day, but it was always enough that at the end of a shift my feet hurt. Chasing down misplaced paperwork, finding a porter and responding to patient calls would all require physical exertion. Having smartphone technology on a ward
makes a nurse more efficient. What’s more, the alarm system can be prioritised. If two patients both call at the same time, for example, one asking for a drink via the chat functionality and the other has pressed for emergency care. The latter is prioritised, with the former delayed or reallocated to another member of the team to help manage workflow.
More connected care The pandemic has accelerated the use of technology across the whole health system, but for years nursing was considered a nervous and somewhat reluctant adopter of it. A recent global healthcare report by Elsevier Health, ‘Clinician of the Future ’, claimed 69% of
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