5 Tech Devices Nurses Need to Get Their Jobs Done
As was repeatedly demonstrated throughout 2020, medical providers are heroes and none of them embodies that courageous nature more than nurses. The news we watched on television and the internet revealed, however, that the tools of the nurses’ trade have changed over time. If your conception of a nurse entails a person wearing a white smock, white stockings and a starched white cap while holding a clipboard and a thermometer, you were likely stunned to see the valiant souls clad in PPE wrangling space-age, life-saving equipment. The appearance of the nurse has changed and so has the necessary equipment required to get the job done. Here are five high-tech pieces of equipment that nurses need when they are caring for you.
The Right Computer
The leap from paper records to digital data records for medical patients was probably done at the insistence of a nurse. The amount of information that nurses need to know, to have available instantaneously and to be able to share seamlessly with other providers is staggering. For the healthcare provider, the computer is necessary for communication and education. The nurse also needs the sort of computer that is portable, expandable and can survive a dive off one of the precarious rolling medicine dispensers that get pushed from room to room. Thus the ideal computers for nurses are consistently dependable, up-to-date, superior, tough laptops.
The Smartest Phone
That little speaker at the head of a patient’s bed (“Edna, what room are you in please?”) may still be there in many hospitals, however, it is rapidly becoming passé. Today’s nurse packs a smartphone with a GPS and more communication capability than the Apollo lunar landers. Beyond the tech attributes of the phone itself are the apps the nurse will have loaded on it:
• Google Translate. You had better be more than bi-lingual.
• Epocrates. This has everything you need to know about the meds you administer.
• NurseGrid. It keeps you in touch with your colleagues and your schedule.
• Keener. This one is a must for personal well-being.
The Appropriate Monitor
Those screens with multiple colors, lines and numbers that stand beside a patient’s bed come in lots of different varieties and a vast multitude of purposes. One thing that sets nurses apart from ordinary citizens is the ability to look at those monitors and know in a dozen different ways what is going on with a patient. There are three main categorizations into which monitors fall: central monitors, which collect information from a number of different pieces of equipment; bedside monitors, whose purpose is limited to watching over certain specifics about the patient; and discharge monitors, which go home with you. Nurses get to set, read and adjust them all.
The Medical Tagging Devices
Considering how many different patients and varieties of medications a nurse must deal with over a 12-hour shift, some of the most important time savers and safety precautions are the medical tagging devices that allow the safe administration of medicine to patients. That barcode on your patient band must match up to the barcode on every form of medication and even the food you will receive. It is funny to think that a code scanner can save your life while making life a little easier for the nurse taking care of you.
The Infusion Pump
This may seem to be the one holdover from a simpler time when in fact the IV pump has changed dramatically. There are distinct pumps for pain medicine, rapid infusion, insulin dosing, enteric infusion and syringe dosing. Indirectly, the infusion pump is the great determiner of whether you stay in the hospital or you get to go home. So long as you are hooked up to an IV, in most cases, you get to remain a guest of the hospital. As much as any other duty, the nuanced ability to deal successfully with infusion pumps sets nurses apart.
Nurses keep people alive. Continuing technological developments help to fulfill their responsibilities and simplify their work on your behalf.
