Focus on Monitoring and Quality Improvement as the Means of Integrating Smart Technology into the Hospital Setting
Patient monitoring is one of the essential steps toward the enhancement of the quality of care and the promotion of improved patient outcomes in the hospital setting. Therefore, using the strategies that allow supervising patients and monitoring their progress is paramount to the successful management of their needs. In the facility in question, the active use of the latest devices for exerting continuous monitoring of the changes in patients’ health status, especially the ones placed in the ICU setting, is the primary means of integrating smart technology into the healthcare environment.
As a result, the opportunities for enhancing the communication process between healthcare providers and patients are created, and the changes in the target population’s health are identified and handled at the earliest stages of their development. Therefore, it is the importance of the continuous quality improvement and the introduction of new tools for enhancing the communication between nurse and patients that define the further integration of smart technologies into the context of the healthcare facility. The identified approach should be encouraged and incorporated into the hospital’s current framework for meeting patients’ needs since it allows creating a more responsive system and, thus, opens the pathway to using a multicultural approach toward a nurse-patient communication, therefore, improving the quality of healthcare and nursing services.
Smart Technology as the Method of Improving Patient Outcomes in the Environment of a Miami Healthcare Facility
The adoption of the Contact-Free Continuous Patient Monitoring (CFCM) technology can be deemed as a revolutionary step in the process of promoting quality improvement in managing patients’ needs in the Miami nursing setting. The identified tool helps track down the changes in the health status of each patient with the help of sensors that are placed under the patients’ beds and transmits the relevant information to the nursing staff. As a result, even minor changes in the well-being of the target population are spotted immediately. The identified device serves as not only the means of preventing the development of complications in patients but also as the tool for assessing the current prognosis and determining possible patient outcomes, as well as evaluating the overall dynamics of the recovery process. Consequently, the monitoring device in question leads to a significant reduction in the duration of the patients’ hospital stay. The latter change, in turn, affects the speed of recovery significantly and allows for a massive drop in the threat of patients contracting nosocomial infections while they remain in the hospital setting. The specified change is especially important for ICU patients (Tal, Shinar, Shaki, Codish, & Goldbart, 2017).
Role of a Nurse Manager in Supporting the Integration of Smart Technology into Nursing and Healthcare
When considering the process of introducing the monitoring devices described above into the environment of a healthcare facility, one must not underrate the significance of the role that nurses play in the said process. The responsibilities of a nurse manager in the specified scenario include the promotion of patient and nurse education and the enhancement of the communication process. Indeed, even though most of the current technological interfaces are user-friendly and most recommendations for using them are self-explanatory, it is essential to make sure that the innovative technology be used appropriately. Therefore, a nurse manager must create the environment in which nurses and patients acquire the skills and knowledge that will help them use the newly introduced devices successfully. Furthermore, it is the duty of a nurse manager to create the environment in which the consistent communication and information sharing between nurses, as well as a nurse-patient dialogue, are encouraged and enhanced actively. As a result, possible misunderstandings and instances of technology misuse will be avoided successfully, and the quality of nursing services will remain at the required high level, leading to a rise in the number of positive patient outcomes (Hung, Tsai, & Chuang, 2014).
References
Hung, S. Y., Tsai, J. C. A., & Chuang, C. C. (2014). Investigating primary health care nurses’ intention to use information technology: An empirical study in Taiwan. Decision Support Systems, 57(1), 331-342. Web.
Tal, A., Shinar, Z., Shaki, D., Codish, S., & Goldbart, A. (2017). Validation of contact-free sleep monitoring device with comparison to polysomnography. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 13(3), 517-522. Web.