According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, there is a current need for approximately 2 million full-time registered nurses in the country to provide adequate patient care. This need is projected to increase to 2.8 million by the year 2020 with an estimated shortage of 1 million nurses by that time. Thus, this supports the need to invest in professional nursing education, but also highlights the importance of improving nursing care through innovative technological means.
Nursing care plans are a means by which nurses continually assess, diagnose, implement, and evaluate a patient’s overall care and progress. In the past, nursing care plan documentation was time consuming, but with the advent of computerized data systems, this process has been simplified for nurses, providing greater efficiency. This efficiencies have eased some of the pain caused by nursing shortages, but there are much broader areas of potential as these systems get more creative.
In a study in which 20 nurses were formally interviewed, several questions were asked about the benefits of using a computerized nursing care plan system. In addition to the expected response of streamlined care, the nurses added several areas of benefit. These benefits included a memory reference for patient details, a learning tool for patient care, and a vehicle for easily modifying care plan content. These responses highlight the creative potential of nursing care plans as IT solutions are developed.
The information included in a nursing care plan routinely involves the anticipated care that a nurse will provide to a patient, the patient’s specifically identified problems, and guidance for assessing and evaluating the success of that care. In other words, the nursing care plan exists in an intermediate stage of the nursing process between the initial evaluation and the final result. Given its central position in patient care, it seems obvious that a computerized nursing care plan offers great potential in many areas in addition to making care more efficient.
For example, the increase in the patient-nurse relationship has not only reduced the amount of time a nurse has per patient, but has also increased the volume of general information the nurse must remember. Computerized care plans allow complete storage of this information. If creative technological developments enable seamless mobile access to this data, the quality of patient care will be improved.
Furthermore, much of the quality of patient care depends on preventive measures. Nursing care plans that include educational tools to teach patients preventive measures result in better long-term health outcomes. Developing and adopting methods that automate these educational tools through computerized means saves nurses time, but can also be more comprehensive and comprehensive. Interactive tools even allow documentation of the care plan that patients received and understood the content.
In the past, nursing care plan changes were more difficult to track. A change can be noted, but the documentation of the change may be vague or located in other areas of the plan. This made continuity difficult between nurses on different shifts or in different areas of patient care. Computerized solutions could allow an improvement in this continuity of information throughout the patient care experience. This would include information from the hospital to care centers and even outpatient centers.
Nursing care plans provide a wealth of information about caring for a patient and also serve as guides to ensure optimal patient care. As the increased demands on nurses evolve, it will be imperative to support their skills in maintaining care plans accurately. Computerized solutions assist in this need by making the documentation and creation of care plans more efficient. In addition, however, technology solutions also provide a means to improve the quality of care by making information easily accessible and by providing preventative educational tools for patients and nurses. These aspects make these creative solutions even more attractive as healthcare resources continue to shrink relative to the demand for healthcare.
References:
Anderson, Bet. (2007) Care Plans: Is it worth it or not? Retrieved from http://agedcareact.wordpress.com on June 10, 2008.
Edmunds, Linda. (1982) Computer assisted nursing care. Vol. 82(7): 1076-79.
Lee, tin-ting. (2006). Perception of Nurses about their Documentation Experiences in a Computerized Nursing Care Plan System. Journal of Clinical Nursing. Vol 15: 1376-82.