Some hospitals are taking steps to make health care IT more user friendly to nurses, allowing them to spend more time with patients, Healthcare IT News reports.
Genesis Health System in Davenport, Iowa, has created a nursing collaborative group to act as a liaison between the hospital's nurses and IT department, Shirley Gusta, IT manager of application services at Genesis, said.
In addition, the hospital in 2005 began using wireless laptops to increase nurses' mobility, according to Gusta. The laptops created "more flexibility to support [nurses'] workflow processes and complete documentation at the patient's bedside, (but) durability and connectivity issues did present new challenges," she said.
Alfred I. duPont Hospital in Wilmington, Del., uses wireless devices for communication in cardiac care, Lori Betts, nurse manager, said. Betts attributes the successful rollout of the devices to the hospital's IT department, which altered the system and provided constant training to nurses for a full week until they adjusted.
Progress West Healthcare Center in St. Louis uses bedside clinical electronic documentation, bedside bar coding of patients and fingerprint notification to allow nurses to log into several programs quickly, Healthcare IT News reports.
In addition, medication and laptops are kept at patients' bedsides to allow nurses to spend more time with patients, according to John Antes, president of Progress West (Manos, Healthcare IT News, 12/4).