New Technology Making a Nurse’s Job Easier

Nurses have a physically demanding job, despite contrary belief, especially someone with a Ph.D in nursing. If you are a nurse, you are always moving from place to place. Nurses, on average, spend almost an hour just answering the phone each time. This isn’t including the time they spend doing other tasks, such as walking to patients’ bedsides and assisting them. What improvements are being made to accommodate nurses?

Smartphones have been in use for quite some time now, yet you may not have thought about how valuable they can be in a hospital setting. The simplicity of a smartphone is great, and the technology is readily available to hospital staff.

Answering a landline phone across the hospital, for example, could take up precious amounts out time any given day.  But a smartphone can definitely help them with this process. All it takes is pulling the phone out of your pocket, pressing the on screen notification, and you are already on the phone answering the caller’s question.

What about notifications? Notifications are just as easy with the use of a smart phone as opposed to getting a note from a coworker or your supervisor. You receive a notification on the phone and respond to it accordingly

Older nurses have trouble competing with all of the stress done to their bodies; however, there may be a solution to their ailments. Nurses who have acquired significant expertise with vitals and other biological measurements might be able to work in a virtual monitoring station. This means they wirelessly monitor patients’ vital statistics and send out responses or respond in case of a problem. This is particularly helpful for nurses who have problems maintaining their workload in a traditional manner.

Another quality of life feature for nurses is improved stations for clerical and secretarial duties. A brief break can be exactly what is needed for a busy nurse. It gives them the time they need to get a breather.

Down the road, you will be seeing changes in how patients are lifted into wheelchairs. There is a development program for creating a robot that lifts patients into wheelchairs and onto beds. The benefits are decreased stress, less physical exertion and more secure patient transfer.

You, as a nurse, would welcome these changes due to the already stressful situation. Any break given in the nursing agency is hard-earned, but it is undeniably necessary and more efficient for nurses to incorporate these changes.

Nurses work in a demanding field that has physical repercussions. Lifting a patient from his or her bed to a wheel chair or into a transport bed can cause fatigue and pain. Technology now exists to ease the burden on you and make your job more efficient.