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Undoubtedly, innovation will increase the productivity, effectiveness, safety, and expense of health care. Fewer individuals, however, recognize that these exact innovations may create mistakes and bad occurrences.

Considering that approximately 5,000 different types of medical equipment are utilized by millions of health care practitioners worldwide, device-related issues are unavoidable.

Although technology has great potential, the advantages of a particular technology may not be realized owing to four significant drawbacks:

  1. The flawed technological concepts don’t correspond to human aspects and ergonomics principles.
  2. Improper technology interaction with the patients or surroundings
  3. Poor strategy for bringing modern technology into practice, and
  4. Inappropriate repair strategy.

Health care technologies have gotten more complicated, altering nursing care to a large degree.

Before the widespread use of technologies, nurses mainly depended on their feeling of vision, touching, scent, and listening to evaluate and identify variations in patient condition.

Nursing practices gradually improve as the learning and educating protocols to grow every day, but there’s still a lot to learn.

There are many developments in the education systems to indoctrinate modern nursing practices, which can help improve the quality of patient care.

One of the most preferred degrees nurses opt for is the RN to BSN Degree.

This helps impart advanced nursing skills needed to perform complex medical procedures with minimum dependence and learn new advancements in medicine.

Nevertheless, digital tools may be perceived as a diversion from, or an undesirable invasion into, nursing’ hands-on care duty and rehabilitative ties with patients and relatives.

This alleged conflict with conventional nursing principles such as empathetic care may reflect why some nurses are hesitant to accept digital alternatives to treatment.

Nursing informatics has consistently campaigned to include technology to help the practice, although it has a small worldwide professional base.

Nursing informaticians are prevalent in the United States, where the field appears to have started. However, many other nations and areas are growing their electronic healthcare workforce and participation through data.

Numerous analyses of digital technologies utilized to endorse or broaden the career have been published in nursing literature, such as

  1. Practice (e.g., hospital information systems, electronic health records, monitoring equipment, decision support, telehealth);
  2. Education (e.g., e-learning, virtual reality, serious games); and
  3. Therapeutic and personalized healthcare strategies (e.g., adaptive devices sensors, ambient assisted living).

Table 1 outlines the possible advantages, limitations, and implications for the practice of new developments.

Selected technologies and their impacts on improving nursing care

 

Digital Technologies

Examples of Potential Benefits  

Examples of current challenges

 

Future implications
 

Artificial Intelligence

 

Use in decision support tools can help enhance infection detection.

 

The reaction to a contagion, a pandemic, or epidemic utilizing big data.

 

In addition, analytics aid in contacts tracking and public health intervention.

 

Existing dataset biases can get embedded in artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

 

Approaches are sophisticated, and they may inadvertently decrease nurse participation in creating these systems.

 

Visibility and privacy problems, as well as ethics and responsibility of judgments created by these networks

 

 

A study of AI-based healthcare in emergency and primary care is required.

 

Professional responsibility policies are required.

 

AI and data analytics-related academic and management abilities and prospects

 

Automation technologies

 

Robotics can benefit persons with intellectual, perceptual, and motor disabilities and those who are sick or wounded, caregiving, and medical staff.

 

Technologists, academics, suppliers, and consumers must work together to achieve effectiveness.

 

Developing technologies combining artificial intelligence and automation will have intentional and unforeseen consequences for nursing practice and the professional environment.

 

Nursing must contribute to the co-design and development of these methods to be practice-complementary.

 

It is necessary to do a cost assessment of creating complicated health systems that utilize global supplies.

 

 

Clinical decision support systems

 

Machines are capable of detecting contagious diseases and initiating necessary responses.

 

Over-alerting doctors lead to reduce weariness and the use of alternatives.

 

The influence and efficacy in various therapeutic settings (e.g.,

 

emergency rooms) are unknown due to a lack of study rigor.

 

 

 

 

Nurses should be engaged in the planning, planning, and execution processes.

 

When creating technologies that enhance rather than disturb decision making and

productivity, considering accessibility.

 

 

Electronic Health Records (EHRs)

 

Nursing documenting outperforms paper-based files regarding data accuracy, organization, and readability.

 

The limitations in the documentation are due to time constraints or inadequate interaction design.

 

Nurses require focused time and resources and friendly digital workplace culture.

 

AI-powered medical decision support incorporated into EHRs to aid decision-making will be critical in identifying planned and unforeseen implications.

 

Nursing leaders should modify EHRs to lessen the documentation load.

 

 

Telehealth, telemedicine

 

Especially useful in nursing homes during contagious illness epidemics, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, to lessen seclusion and keep patients and medical staff secure.

 

 

Nurses’ limited skills in tech, negative attitude regarding telemedicine, and concerns about data privacy might be a hurdle.

 

Nurses should work with clients and caregivers to co-design telehealth technologies and future digital models of care.

 

Virtual and augmented reality

 

Virtual reality training can increase nursing teaching-learning and be a therapeutic tool or medical therapy in pediatric and adolescent populations.

 

 

Simulated sickness involving nausea and vision problems is possible.

 

Nurses and instructors should create low-cost gadgets and programs that connect with current cellphone, online, and other modern devices.

Conclusion

Several studies indicate healthcare systems falling short in their capacity to utilize new technologies safely.

Workforces, tools, and technology can be designed with human aspects to consider. Still, as end-users, nursing can maximize safety through selection, continuing equipment monitoring, and preemptive risk approaches.

The method presented to nurses is congruent with the World Health Organization Medical Devices and Equipment team’s four-pronged tactic:

Policy: Nurses who provide actual patient care should actively develop and access technology-related institutional, organizational, and public policy.

Quality and safety: Direct patient care nurses may guarantee that the technology they employ fulfills international quality and safety standards and the technical specifications required to function in the clinical context in which they are utilized.

Access: Nurses who provide direct patient care may guarantee that institutional decisions are decided with their involvement and the participation of other key partners.

Use: Nurses who provide direct patient care should be active in their intuitional policies and procedures for technology repair, education, tracking, and evaluation.