Over an average day, nurses in clinics and hospitals across the US healthcare system have a huge number of responsibilities. Although their priority is always delivering optimal care for patients, as part of this, they have to complete other tasks. These include carrying out assessments, giving medications, recording patient notes and analyzing test results.
Technology can never take the place of a nurse when it comes to building trust and offering support, but solutions such as remote monitors and informatics can help them work more efficiently. This enables nurses to carry out their day-to-day duties more swiftly and means that they can spend more time at the bedside with the patients on their ward.
How to begin on the road to improving healthcare?
Modern universities have prepared their nursing education programs to embrace a future that will be shaped by technological advancements. From the content of the course to the method of teaching, academic institutions such as Carson-Newman University are providing busy professionals with a route to career progression that prepares them to meet healthcare challenges and harness the power of technology when doing so.
Healthcare workers who are interested in utilizing these future trends in nursing and plan to extend their scope of practice can click here to explore the Master of Science in Nursing – Family Nurse Practitioner program (MSN-FNP) at Carson-Newman University. The coursework is delivered online, while clinical and residency placements are organized locally and enable students to learn from a preceptor and from their studies. Once graduates qualify and are ready for their first role as a family nurse practitioner, they will work with a range of medical innovations. Below, we take a look at several of these innovations.
Informatics allows nurses to predict a patient’s level of risk
Although informatics is largely invisible, it can have a considerable impact on how quickly a diagnosis is made and a patient’s recovery time. It uses predictive algorithms, vast amounts of healthcare data, and artificial intelligence (AI) to offer recommendations about a patient’s care or predict their risk of contracting a disease or condition. Nurses can use dashboards on tablets or computer terminals to view any appropriate data, choose when or how to intervene, and support patients on their journey through the healthcare system. As well as being useful at the bedside, analytics can scan data from patients’ electronic health records to evaluate whether they are at risk of readmittance. If necessary, a nurse can offer enhanced support or arrange additional care for patients when they are discharged with a high level of risk.
Robotics takes care of physical tasks
Nurses already use robots to lift, transport and rehabilitate patients in hospitals and care homes. Now, the role that robots can play in healthcare is expanding into both customer service and delivery work. Inpatient support robots are used to greet people when they enter a building and help them to register for an appointment. They can also be found in senior care facilities, offering company and comfort when a human member of the team is not available.
These patient-facing robots work similarly to chatbots, which use algorithms to assess patients and determine whether they need to speak with a healthcare worker. Should the symptoms not merit a visit to a healthcare professional, the robot will conduct a conversation and offer guidance, which frees up the human team for care tasks.
Robots are also used to gather supplies from storerooms and deliver them to offices and wards throughout a facility. Automating simple tasks such as these saves nurses from walking the corridors of their hospital to visit the pharmacy or pick up equipment from another part of the building.
Providing comfort and mobility to patients through 3D printing
Unlike standard implants or prosthetics, those created by a 3D printer are entirely tailored to the individual patient. They can match a person’s shape and size with incredible accuracy, which ensures that they work well when in position and are less likely to cause discomfort. 3D printing can be carried out using an exact copy of the patient’s anatomy, which means that surgeons can plan out more complex procedures in detail and minimize the risks involved. As a result, patients spend less time under anesthetic and their recovery times can be shorter.
Bioprinting is an emerging form of 3D printing and one that has the potential to create artificial skin, valves and organs to replace damaged or faulty tissue. As the synthetic materials created in this way are grown from the patient’s own cells, they are not rejected by the immune system and ensure that patients have smoother experiences in recovery.
Wearable devices monitor patients remotely
Smart glasses, heart monitors, and fitness trackers are used by nurses to track a patient’s activity levels and vital signs and to help treat their condition. Using these devices, the practitioner can gather lots of patient-specific information, and then analyze it in real time and modify a treatment plan to target the individual’s needs. As such, these devices can help nurses to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs, by ensuring that medical conditions are diagnosed and treated at the earliest possible stage.
Wearables can also pick up signs that a patient with a pre-diagnosed condition needs follow-up care. They can be particularly useful for people who have diabetes or heart disease, as monitors are often able to detect the signs of a problem before the patient. This encourages patients to engage with the wearable they use and also to be more adherent in general. As people can observe first-hand the effects of not taking their medication correctly or failing to exercise, they are often more motivated to make positive lifestyle changes.
On the front lines of innovation in healthcare
Nursing practice is changing profoundly to include new and original ways of working with technology. This is having a positive impact on patient care in many ways, from nurses using AI to inform their decision-making to robots managing unskilled tasks and practitioners having more time to support patients on the front lines of care. This paradigm will continue to increase, as fresh innovations are adopted to improve healthcare, and universities teach nurses the competencies needed to apply them in real-world settings.
