Do computers make our jobs easier?
It depends on where you are on the learning curve. If you ask a nurse who has just been handed a new technology to use the answer will be a resounding, “NO!!” Ask the same nurse a few months later and the answer may be a less resounding, “Well… maybe.”
When I was recently hospitalized for the birth of my son, the maternity care nurses had just begun using a new computerized system to dispense meds and they were not happy about it.
The system consisted of a laptop computer with a hand held scanner, mounted on a cart so you could wheel it into each patient’s room. I’m not sure what the name for this new system is, but visually it reminded me of a medium sized dinosaur. Awkward looking, to say the least. Awkward to use, as well. When the nurse needed to give me a medication she had to retrieve the medication, wheel the computer into my room, scan my name band, and then page through to the correct screen where there was a list of my medications. Then she could give me the medication, which in my case was a simple tab of motrin.
It got to the point where I felt bad asking for my PRN motrin, watching what they had to go through to dispense it to me. Also, I had some motrin in my bag and I could have just taken some myself. My former self would done just that, but as a nurse you are taught that under no circumstance should any patient be able to dispense their own meds. So if I took it myself I would then have to lie to my nurse about it, and I’m not a very good liar.
So I listened to the nurses complain about the darn thing each time they came in to dispense meds. They had trouble with the user interface, trouble getting the scanner to work, and trouble fitting the darn computer into the room when the room was filled with visitors.
After having gone through my own frustrations when we switched to a computerized physician order entry (cPOE) system on our unit, I assured them that it would get better after time.
HOWEVER. This leads me to another message for the all the nursing students out there… if you are required to take a course called “nursing informatics,” be patient and pay attention. (And believe me, I remember how we used to complain about all the “extra” courses we had to take – If it wasn’t about blood and guts we just didn’t have the time for it.) But think about it this way: We need informatics nurses because they will be the ones designing the technology that we use in the hospital. So I urge you to consider this field. The more nurses that are actually designing the equipment that we use, the happier we will be with that equipment. And the more likely we will be walking around with cute little efficient hand helds rather than dinosaur-like computers on wheels.
Okay, students, now you can get back to your blood and guts.