When it comes to federal regulations mandating better patient care practices in hospitals, nurses are the ones on the front line. Nurses, more than any other hospital staff, have felt the impact from new federal regulations, including Meaningful Use requirements and modern healthcare best practices.
Today, there are several new technologies, — such as clinical smartphones and mobile healthcare applications — to help nurses and hospitals deliver better patient care by improving nurse and hospital staff workflows to meet federal requirements. These new devices and applications enable hospitals to enhance their operations by helping nurses and patient care teams be more connected and work smarter and more efficiently than ever before.
By Doug Brown, Healthcare Marketing Manager, Honeywell Sensing and Productivity Solutions
When it comes to federal regulations mandating better patient care practices in hospitals, nurses are the ones on the front line. Nurses, more than any other hospital staff, have felt the impact from new federal regulations, including Meaningful Use requirements and modern healthcare best practices.
For example, a study in the American Journal of Nursing found nurses spent only 44 percent of their time on direct patient care and the rest of their time in support activities such as hunting for equipment, obtaining medications, and other administrative tasks. Compounding this challenge are new government reimbursement laws that can severely tighten hospital budgets and impact staffing decisions. As a result, nursing staffs are being reduced at a time when they are also asked to deliver more effective care.
Today, there are several new technologies, — such as clinical smartphones and mobile healthcare applications — to help nurses and hospitals deliver better patient care by improving nurse and hospital staff workflows to meet federal requirements. These new devices and applications enable hospitals to enhance their operations by helping nurses and patient care teams be more connected and work smarter and more efficiently than ever before.
Adopting a connected clinician model has its benefits, and those benefits continue to increase as mobile healthcare software applications advance. For example, Electronic Medical Records (EMR) software providers and specialty clinical software companies are continuously advancing their solution capabilities to support the demand for greater mobility within the hospital. Applications such as vitals collection, meds administration, specimen collection, alarm management, nurse call, and care team communication are in the greatest demand. Also growing in demand are reference apps that provide nurses and other clinical staff easy access to electronic drug data and dose safety information or medical dictionaries and disease reference guides.
Combine these software advancements with more powerful smartphones equipped with scanners and the patient’s care team benefits from improved collaboration, faster access to patient data or other critical information, and more effective responses to patient needs. Let’s examine these benefits more closely.
Care Team Collaboration
Today’s patient care team must stay connected at all times no matter where they are in the hospital to facilitate better patient outcomes. Clinical smartphones armed with team collaboration applications can connect care teams via VoIP phone calls, secure texting, email, and even video chat sessions.
For example, these systems make it easy for nurses to quickly identify and connect with the physician associated with each patient and determine in real time if the physician is able to connect. Thumbing through lists of clinician names in hopes one of them stands out is no longer necessary.
Nurses can also benefit from these collaboration tools they need assistance with the patient. For instance, a nurse might need help turning a patient in bed, helping a patient stand, or assisting a patient to the bathroom. Today the nurse would push the nurse call button on the patient’s bed and wait for another nurse to reply or notice the light on above the door. Instead, nurses could use their collaboration application to find a fellow nurse nearby and call or text them for help.
Access To Data And Critical Information
With clinical smartphones, nurses can now more easily monitor the patient’s condition. For example, medical devices connected to a patient monitor vitals data and deliver medications in precise metered dosages. A clinical smartphone, with a comfortable and familiar user interface, can enable care teams to monitor all the technology attached to a patient from anywhere in the hospital. As a result, nurses can now check the patient’s heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature while walking down the hall to retrieve some supplies.
Moreover, EMR mobile application deployments can provide care teams with immediate access to patient data, care plans, and workflow status. Accessing these applications on a clinical smartphone can help care teams operate more efficiently, by having clinical data in hand when the need for information is immediate or they need to enter patient information.
Often in a professional setting, it can be difficult to admit to a colleague or supervisor that you don’t know a certain fact or piece of information. Nurses can experience similar pressures and often prefer to look up information themselves rather than ask another nurse or doctor. Also, someone may not be readily available to ask either in a busy hospital environment. These mobile devices and applications can also help alleviate the demand for available PCs or WoW carts when nurses need to look up patient or medical information or log new information into a patient’s records.
Faster, More Effective Responses For Greater Patient Satisfaction
Medical devices are common place in hospitals, helping to monitor patient vitals and conditions. Often these machines will trigger alarms when they detect a change in the patient’s condition or when the system requires the attention of a nurse or doctor. However, these alarms can often be false, leading to alarm fatigue among a care team. Clinical smartphones can help alleviate this issue. For example, clinical smartphones can alert nurses whenever a medical device alarm is triggered, but they also enable nurses to check on the device status from anywhere in the hospital. This make it easier for nurses to determine whether a room visit is necessary or if they can remotely turn off the alarm if falsely triggered.
Medical device alarms are not the only way nurses are alerted to a patient’s potential need. Nurse calls are also a vital communications vehicle, when a patient or their family needs assistance. Clinical smartphones can help improve nurse calls by notifying nurses when they are needed from anywhere in the hospital. One of the most important factors in patient satisfaction scores is a patient’s belief that their nurse is there for them and easily reachable. Knowing their nurse is carrying a smartphone which they can call in an emergency can be a huge boost compared to past systems involving a red light over the door to the patient’s room.
Delivering A Better Patient Experience
The benefit of becoming a connected clinician goes beyond improving operations and creating efficiencies. It’s about delivering a better quality of care and patient experience, in an age where a patient’s opinion of the care they receive is as important as ever. It’s about empowering nurses and other care staff to be better connected and in tune with their patients’ needs. It’s about helping them spend more face time with patients to assure them that their health is the number one priority. That’s peace of mind that all patients can appreciate.
About The Author
Doug Brown, Honeywell Scanning & Mobility Healthcare Marketing Manager, has spent that past five years focused on communicating Honeywell patient safety solutions to hospitals throughout North America. He has a broad range of experience with Nursing, Pharmacy, Lab, and hospital supply chain workflows and a 25-year background in barcode, mobile computing, and printer technologies.
