The nation's nurse scarcity exhibits no indicators of slowing – which suggests healthcare suppliers should stay dedicated to discovering modern, technology-based methods to cut back nurse burnout and stress ranges.

One well being care system – Sentara Well being, which operates 12 hospitals in Virginia and North Carolina – is utilizing iPhones to assist enhance nurses' job satisfaction. Over the previous yr, the well being system invested $11 million in 4,9000 iPhones, that are presently utilized by 10,550 nurses at 11 Sentara hospitals.

Amy Rosa, Sentara's director of nursing informatics, mentioned this mission is already proving to be nicely value the fee.

The nurses' iPhones could appear to be common smartphones, however Sentara has configured them to be safe and HIPAA compliant. They can not entry social media, cell companies, video games or the App Retailer and no knowledge is saved on these units. When a nurse docks the cellphone on the finish of her shift, the machine robotically clears, Rosa explains.

One of many key advantages of the telephones is that they make it simpler for nurses to speak with totally different care workforce members throughout the well being care system, she famous.

“From a bedside nurse's perspective, I may have the variety of the respiratory therapist on name or the bodily therapist on name. This platform robotically maintains the record of individuals, so we are able to talk with these groups sooner and extra effectively than ever earlier than,” says Rosa.

This eliminates the necessity for a number of units similar to walkie-talkies, primary telephones and pagers, she mentioned.

One other good thing about the telephones is that they assist nurses meet sufferers' wants extra shortly. Many hospitals have bells and lights that go off exterior a affected person's room to let the nurse know they want consideration — however with the addition of Sentara's smartphones, that notification goes straight to a nurse's pocket, Rosa famous.

Sentara's smartphones additionally give nurses fast entry to their sufferers' medical data. Rosa famous that the telephones have saved every nurse a median of 78 steps per shift as a result of all the pieces they want when it comes to affected person data is all the time at their fingertips.

She additionally defined that real-time entry permits for safer and sooner decision-making, similar to reviewing laboratory outcomes earlier than administering a drug.

Along with offering nurses with the knowledge they want, the telephones additionally permit them to gather knowledge in actual time as an alternative of getting to enter the knowledge into a pc. For instance, the telephones can scan medicines and laboratories, but in addition take images of wounds.

Remedy scanning is a course of that ensures that the proper medicine is run to the proper affected person, on the proper dose, time and route. It includes scanning barcodes on the affected person's wristband and on the packaging of the medicines. Sentara's cell phones substitute wall-mounted scanners, making it simpler to carry out duties similar to scanning IV baggage proper on the bedside and decreasing pointless actions and steps, Rosa famous.

Sentara nurses have scanned medicines about 157,000 instances utilizing the brand new cell course of, she mentioned.

“That may be a threefold enhance from our earlier common [new mode of] measurement. It is very important perceive that scanning medicines is a security measure,” Rosa famous. “After we say we've tripled our common of utilizing that course of in assortment laboratories, meaning we're tripling our common of constructing our laboratory assortment safer.”

The truth that nurses can doc care instantly on their telephones additionally minimizes errors and helps physicians guarantee up-to-date data, she added.

Total, Rosa believes that smartphones are a “fantastic addition” to any nurse's workflow – and that extra healthcare programs ought to take into consideration rolling out a mobile phone program like Sentara's.

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