The digitization of nursing care will certainly allow nurses to practice in a very different work environment from the one we know in the near future. Digital technology plays a key role in improving healthcare delivery, medical outcomes and therapeutic efficacy. It offers real opportunities to participate in its development for all nurses and nursing staff.
The digitization of nursing, notably through technology at the patient’s bedside, data sharing, digital security, applications and portable devices will certainly allow nurses in the near future to practice in a highly demanding work environment. Technology will play a key role in this transformation. As a future of technology in nursing this is a very important matter.
However, as healthcare systems continue their digital transformation, nurses remain stuck between two worlds. Nurses are still grappling with the ancestral difficulties of their profession, and they now face new challenges such as organizational restructuring and new procedures. Digital tools, which can potentially improve workflows and facilitate repetitive and non-essential tasks, are introduced with insufficient training or inadequate change management processes, increasing the already substantial workload.
66 percent of nurses surveyed deplore insufficient training in point-of-care IT solutions. This is followed by concerns about how technology is integrated into the workflow (65%) and where technology is placed in the workflow (61%).
Nurses Want To Focus On Care
By some estimates, hospital nurses spend three hours of a typical 12-hour shift away from patients, meeting regulatory requirements, completing redundant paperwork, and providing indirect care. Other sources estimate that nurses and members of the healthcare team spend up to 50% of their time on tasks other than caregiving. Some of the main time-consuming and distracting tasks include: documenting patient care information in multiple locations, keeping records, checklists and other redundant forms. Nurses interviewed also said they waste time trying to locate colleagues, equipment and supplies, as well as coordinating the cleaning of the premises. Responding to non-urgent patient calls and reconciling medications is also time consuming for caregivers.
The workload of nurses is increased by the evolution of the nursing profession itself. A poll carried out in 2016 by the University of Health Professionals in Phoenix found that four in five nurses had a more important role in the management of patient care than two years ago, and 84% of registered nurses felt that non-physicians would play an even greater role in the management of patient care over the next five years. While these developments are, on the whole, good news for the profession, because they add value, they also involve more work for nurses who are already under an oversized workload. It becomes necessary for their well-being to free nurses from certain manual, repetitive and automatable tasks. The entire health system would benefit.
The Electronic Platform
The Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is the digital version of a paper record that contains all of your medical history. This personal health information improves the quality of health care. Licensed healthcare professionals have fast and secure access to your file, no matter where in the NWT you receive your healthcare services.
Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are simply the digital form of a patient’s paper record or medical history. These records contain all the required patient information such as laboratory results such as tests, allergy information, vaccination dates and medications relevant to patients, etc.
In case you don’t already know, document scanning is a crucial step for businesses looking to enter the modern age. It allows them, in particular, to reduce their production time, to strengthen communication and collaboration within their teams, to facilitate accessibility to documents, to free up office space and, finally, last point, but not the least, to save money. And these are just a few of the many benefits of document scanning for businesses, regardless of their industry. Some advantages are specific to the digitalization of medical records in the healthcare sector. As the benefits of electronic health records you must keep this in mind.
Access and storage
Storing patient records is a laborious process: you have to find space to put them away, sort out active and inactive patients, manage badly arranged records, and then look for records that are going to be used. These days for medical records use of cloud PC such as Hosted Desktop i.e. Windows Virtual Desktop are rapidly increasing. Once these records have been scanned and uploaded to a digital medical records management platform, you will be able to quickly access them, systematically store them correctly and reclaim space on your premises.
With the number of patients steadily increasing and their expectations rising, healthcare professionals cannot afford to fall behind in their service. If a patient sees their doctor and later wants to get a specific question answered or simply read their medical records, the ensuing process can be quite laborious. Usually, a staff member will have to stop what they are doing to find the record, make a copy, and send it to the patient. With a digital medical record management platform, a simple search would be enough to find the record which could be immediately emailed to the patient. This frees up time for the healthcare facility in charge and enables the patient’s expectations to be met quickly. Everybody wins.
Long-term savings
A digital medical records management platform is a real investment. Implementation can be costly and some institutions cannot afford this change immediately. But, as with any investment, the payoffs will kick in quickly, and you’ll end up saving way more than what it cost you initially. With such a platform, you will spend much less time managing your files, which will be better protected, and you will recover space on your premises.