Here are some of the technologies that have changed the nursing career in the past century. 1. Electronic IV monitors,
2.portable defibrillators
3.computer stations
4.hands-free communication devices including remote call badges
5.portable IT devices.
6.drug management technology to regulate dosage of medications.
Yet with all these advances, there is an acute nursing shortage in many parts of the world. By the year 2020, it is estimated there will be a shortage of 800,000 nurses.
Buerhaus, JAMA,2000
In the 1990's I wrote a skit for a degree nursing course called Nursing 2020 and some of my fellow classmates enacted it out. I had a challenging time to convince these registered nurses that charting would be done at the bedside on computers and that hospital cleaning would be done by robots.
Three years later, working in Florida, the former was a reality. While visiting a maternity hospital in Singapore, I was going to an elevator when I was told by a voice to move out of the way which I did and stared in disbelief at the machine that gave the command. It was taking food trays to the patients on the floor and was gave the command after entering the elevator for the particular floor.
New technological advances are continuing?
R2D2 - Robot nurses could be in hospitals by 2020! (Warwick University Engineering Dept, UK.)
What are your views? Would robots take over as Nurses?
Will hospitals be managed by Nurses?
Some Nurses are already ordering treatments and medications. They are the NP - licensed Nurse Practitioners. On next Tuesday's post, we will have the interview with Nurse Practitioner, Jennifer and the following week, we will have the interview with Nurse William!
Agapelife
copyright/P Nicholas
Friday, September 12, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Who Becomes a Nurse?
Before we peer into the future of the Nurse and Nursing, let us discuss the characters of people who enter the nursing vocation. In the days of Florence Nightingale and before, it was middle class ladies who were altruistic or nuns and monks as the extension of their religious vocation.
in Europe.
In the forties and fifties, some nurses might tell you that they became nurses as there was not much opportunities for women in other fields.
Traits of nurses include compassion,intelligence, diligence ethical,non-judgemental, confident, problem solver, multi-tasking,humorous,
politeness, flexibility, well organized,precision,intuitive, a good listener,patient advocate and many other traits which will need a longer posting. Do send me traits not mentioned in your comments?
Irregular Nursing shifts, physically or verbally abused by patients, working extra shifts, working weekends, call back on days off, no room for errors are all part and parcel of a nurse's life. Through all this, the nurse is expected to be kind,polite and smile without retaliation of any kind. Is it any wonder, that some think nurses have a masochistic trait as well.
On several occasions previously, when I was assigned to six patients and four of them in the same room were asking me, at the same time to attend to their requests, while I was doing a treatment on one, I remember saying " I am not an octopus, only a nurse", which made them laugh. Many times, I felt I needed more arms to tend to the patients assigned to me.
As one nurse wrote on her blog posting, -
"Nursing is head on, hands on, heart on, all together, all at once, maybe that is enough explanation why there is a Nursing Shortage; because not a lot of people can be all that, all at once".
may at www.aboutanurse.com
Agapelife
copyright/P.Nicholas
in Europe.
In the forties and fifties, some nurses might tell you that they became nurses as there was not much opportunities for women in other fields.
Traits of nurses include compassion,intelligence, diligence ethical,non-judgemental, confident, problem solver, multi-tasking,humorous,
politeness, flexibility, well organized,precision,intuitive, a good listener,patient advocate and many other traits which will need a longer posting. Do send me traits not mentioned in your comments?
Irregular Nursing shifts, physically or verbally abused by patients, working extra shifts, working weekends, call back on days off, no room for errors are all part and parcel of a nurse's life. Through all this, the nurse is expected to be kind,polite and smile without retaliation of any kind. Is it any wonder, that some think nurses have a masochistic trait as well.
On several occasions previously, when I was assigned to six patients and four of them in the same room were asking me, at the same time to attend to their requests, while I was doing a treatment on one, I remember saying " I am not an octopus, only a nurse", which made them laugh. Many times, I felt I needed more arms to tend to the patients assigned to me.
As one nurse wrote on her blog posting, -
"Nursing is head on, hands on, heart on, all together, all at once, maybe that is enough explanation why there is a Nursing Shortage; because not a lot of people can be all that, all at once".
may at www.aboutanurse.com
Agapelife
copyright/P.Nicholas
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