This week marks National Nurses Week in the U.S., both a celebration of the profession and an opportunity to educate the public about the role nurses play in healthcare and their communities. This year’s theme of “Nurses: Inspire, Innovate, Influence” highlights three concepts that overlap and reflect the innate role nurses play in patient care, as well as drawing attention to the personality types often drawn to nursing.
Author Archives: Aparna Bala
Nurse-Physician Collaboration: Harnessing the Power of Health IT to Improve Patient Outcomes
Most physicians have long enjoyed the benefits of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies. As health systems focused on ensuring doctors had access to state-of-the-art health IT to monitor their patients when they couldn’t be at the bedside, the quality of tools and pace of adoption for nursing solutions did not keep up. In some situations, nurses received bulky phones that could only be used within the walls of the hospital, while physicians needed to download specific apps on their own devices to receive calls from the nurses’ devices. Technical difficulties were frequent. In other situations, health systems tried rolling out solutions to nurses that had been used successfully by physicians. Unfortunately, those solutions were not always conducive to nurses’ workflow.
Finding Balance in Chaos
The role of a nurse is a complex one. Not only is this individual responsible for the physical bedside care of multiple patients, but may also be called upon to offer emotional support for patients and their families. While this is an absolute honor and a privilege, it can also be emotionally draining and lead to burnout syndrome or compassion fatigue. In order to ensure that patients receive the highest quality care, we must make sure that nurses have support for their own emotional well-being.
Making Technology Work for Nurses
Nursing is the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and abilities, prevention of illness and injury, alleviation of suffering through the diagnosis and treatment of human response, and advocacy in the care of individuals, families, communities, and populations (American Nurses Association, 2014)
Nurses are on the frontlines delivering care and ensuring that a patient’s safety and best interest remain at the center of care. Key nursing values promote a holistic approach to patient care – one that incorporates not only clinical responsibilities, but also compassion, cultural sensitivity, situational awareness and tech savviness. Continue reading
Adapting to the New Wave of Nursing
Much of how we approach healthcare improvements today is focused on physicians. At first blush, this makes sense since traditionally they are perceived as key decision makers. But, it is important to remember that patient care is delivered by collaborative clinical team – including nurses.
As the American Association of Colleges of Nursing notes, nursing is the nation’s largest health care profession, and registered nurses comprise one of the largest segments of the U.S. workforce as a whole. Additionally, the role of nursing in care delivery is growing at the same time that healthcare is experiencing a nurse shortage. Nurses now juggle several fundamental responsibilities including coordinating care, administering medications, interpreting patient diagnostics information, and directing/supervising care. These individuals care for a caseload of anywhere from 1 to 15 patients during an 8-12 hour shift.
Mobile Health Matters 