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TwitThisThe Role of Technology
Then there are new procedures such as laparoscopic surgery, which have revolutionized operations, sharply cutting the need for longer hospital stays. Some patients who once remained in the hospital four or five days are now able to leave within 24 hours, thanks to these faster and less invasive procedures.But medical technology won't likely prove a panacea. For one thing, these technologies still need people, often nurses, to monitor them. Also, technical advances are keeping people alive longer than in the past -- a good thing, of course, but it extends their need for nursing care. So the irony of ever-improving medical technology is that, even as it eases the nursing burden, it adds to it.
In any case, technology can never fill all the critical roles that nurses play. For instance, every time a nurse enters a patient's room, she observes his or her color, demeanor, state of mind and speech. Any subtle change can signal trouble. Mike Hurewitz failed to get this sort of assessment -- and none of the devices he was hooked up to could perform that job.
Perhaps the real answer to the nursing shortage won't come from investing in technology but from investing more in our nurses. That's the goal of a program launched by the American Nurses Association that grants "magnet" status to hospitals that can prove two things: They provide high-quality nursing care and they retain their nurses. Earning the magnet designation is one way hospitals can boost their prestige and thereby attract more patients. It's also so tough to attain that only 74 of the country's 4,908 community hospitals have achieved this status.
Among the qualifying criteria for hospitals: authority given nurses to make major health care decisions; opportunities for nurses to further their education; investment in technologies that nurses identify as useful; and fair compensation.
Often, magnet hospitals provide extra services to help their nurses cope with job pressures. North Shore Long Island Jewish Health System, several magnet hospitals that employ more than 7,000 nurses, takes care of its time-pressed nurses by offering such things as online banking, a dry cleaning service and a food shopping service that delivers groceries to them at work. The hospital's nursing turnover is only 5 to 6 percent a year, about a quarter of the current U.S. average.
In fact, some magnet hospitals have waiting lists of applicants. Meanwhile, studies show that patients in these magnet hospitals have lower mortality rates. They also have shorter lengths of stay, which offsets the costs of the higher nurse-to-patient ratio.
Unfortunately, no one can count on living near a magnet hospital. As the nursing crisis builds, the smartest response may be something patients' families can do.
When her husband underwent surgery, Karen Chase, an RN in Westwood, N.J., virtually moved into his hospital room. Chase knew exactly what patients are up against: She once worked in a hospital, but is now a private duty nurse.
At one point, as her husband moved from his bed to a chair, a spinal catheter that administered his pain medication slipped out. "This catheter should be sterile, and it was dangling on the floor," Chase says. She watched in disbelief as a nurse's aide started to stick the catheter back in.
"What are you doing?" Chase screamed. "You can't reattach that. It's dirty!"
If Chase hadn't been camped out in the room, she wouldn't have caught the mistake. Most frustrating to her, she knows that any RN would have known what to do. But there were no nurses around.
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