Technology and Nursing Care: How is the Profession Being Transformed?

It's one thing to hear impressive but vague predictions about how technology is going to revolutionize the nursing industry. But it's quite another thing to take stock of all the new medical technologies that are actually being used by many hospitals right now and transforming the industry. Let’s take a look at the technologies future nurses will need to know in order to do their jobs.

Tech-aided Nursing

Medicine has been one of the prime drivers of innovation in the technological field Today, the medical tools industry has grown to include many types of incredibly complex machines that you need several years of training in college to use properly. These machines include:

Electronic Monitors

Nurses are expected to be familiar with a range of electronic monitoring devices, from electrocardiograms to CT-Scan machines. These machines not only provide highly accurate information about the patient's health but save nurses a great deal of time and effort.

Sphygmomanometer

This humble device is fairly easy to use and can tell nurses a great deal about how ill a patient is. The latest version of the sphygmomanometer can automatically measure blood pressure and heartbeat, making a big difference to the nurse's duties on a daily basis.

Defibrillator

For a long time, nurses had to rely on manual CPR to try to help a patient who's heart had stopped beating. Thankfully, the present day portable defibrillator gives the patient a much better chance of survival while requiring much less effort on the nurse's part.

The Internet

As with every other facet of life, the internet has had a profound effect on the way nurses perform their job. Nurses use the world wide web on a daily basis, in addition to using the hospital's private digital network for many activities including:

• Searching for answers to complex medical problems on the internet.
• Studying new medical techniques and how they are performed through online recordings.
• Staying in touch with medical experts from other parts of the world and asking for their advice on the more difficult questions relating to a particular disease or treatment method.
• Uploading the results of their own nursing experiences for the benefit of other nurses by creating a giant online resource for the global nursing community.

Cutting-edge Practices

All the above-mentioned technologies have been around for many years, and have more or less become a permanent feature of the medical landscape. But there are a host of new technological innovations that have only been perfected within the last few years. These new technological products promise to revolutionize the medical industry, and especially nursing practices with their unprecedented efficiency and scope. Let's take a look at some of the most important cutting-edge uses of technology in nursing:

RTLS

Real-time locating systems (RTLS) allow for radio-frequency identification tags to track medical equipment so that equipment can be located and retrieved at a moment's notice. The technology is also used to monitor patients at all times, especially the patients who suffer from mental disorders and need constant supervision.

e-Notes

For the longest time, nurses were saddled with pages and pages of medical notes that were difficult to store and locate after a few months. But a new generation of electronic tablets and mobile charts now allow nurses to use a single device to store all their notes in an orderly fashion.

m-Health

Mobile health is the latest innovation which promises to make the bond between nurses and patients stronger than ever. Nurses can use mobile apps to remotely monitor the patient's progress and convey useful information about their health and medicinal intake on a regular basis no matter how far away the patient may be.

Robotics

The robots used in medicine are becoming increasingly more sophisticated. They are able to perform complex medical procedures in a non-invasive manner to a much more precise degree as long as they are being controlled by an experienced nurse.

Vein Finders

More than two million venipuncture procedures are carried out every day. A new piece of technology allows the veins to be much more visible so that nurses can locate them easily instead of extended poking and prodding sessions.

Embracing the Revolution

With the increasingly important part that technology is playing in nursing, it would do well for new nursing students to focus on learning about the latest advances in technology in their field. Students should keep their ears to the ground by making use of the internet to find nursing blogs which discuss these technologies so that when the day inevitably comes when you are expected to work with said technologies, they can take up the task with a feeling of familiarity and confidence.

Are you fascinated by nursing technology and want to use state-of-the-art machines to help patients feel better? If you want to become a registered nurse and earn your Associate of Applied Science in Nursing consider ECPI University for the education you’ll need to get started in the field. For more information, contact a friendly ECPI University admissions representative today.

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