Technology helps nurses give better care
In the late 1960s, Roy L. Simpson was working in a diabetic clinic at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. As part of a nursing leadership project he convinced the phone company to set up a line that directed patients to press 1 to talk to a physician or 2 for a nurse practitioner to make the office more efficient.
“That sounds like no big deal, but it was new technology and I had to convince my supervisor how this was part of nursing,” said Simpson, RN, C, FNAP, FAAN.
Today, Simpson is an internationally recognized nursing informatics expert and vice president of Cerner Group, a health care IT group. He has spent most of his 40-year nursing career helping people understand technology and the ever-increasing role it plays in health care.
At a March 5 nursing technology conference at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, Simpson spoke about how technology is transforming nursing. He believes that the effort to create a Nursing Minimum Data Set, which is the first attempt to standardize the collection of essential nursing data across care settings, will change the definition of nursing. So will the national push for hospitals to move toward electronic medical records by 2013, he believes.
“The only way to have evidence-based practice is through data,” he said. “Without computers, all we have are individual paper notes of nursing care.
“Informatics can produce large data sets at the point of care so that we know, for instance, that putting the bed at a 30-degree angle for certain patients prevents pneumonia. Those data give us important information that increases knowledge.”
With more nursing data, Simpson believes the public and health care professionals will have a clearer picture of what nurses do.
“For one thing, nurses coordinate care — that’s a uniqueness that we provide that we’re not fully given credit for at present,” he said.
Technology is a tool that helps nurses optimize patient care, Simpson said. “It doesn’t replace anything. It enables us to have data for research and with research, to change practice.”
In this month’s cover story, you’ll see how computers, robots, lasers and other technological advances are rapidly changing surgical procedures — and the role of operating room nurses.
“But we are still taking care of patients and their families,” said Michele McCammon, RN, BSN, operating room manager at DeKalb Medical in Decatur. “All of our services are geared toward patient care. That has not changed. Only the tools have changed.”
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