One of the ways of improving the quality of care offered by nurses is by incorporating relevant technologies into nursing practice. Currently, technology is applied widely in patient monitoring but there are other potential applications. A recent technology tool adopted in the health facility I work in is the Real time locating system (RTLS). This is a computer-based RFID system that allows nurses to locate various movable objects in the hospital (Oztekin et al., 2010). Patient need tools such as wheelchairs or infusion pumps and nurses used to walk around the hospital looking for such equipments. With RTLS, a nurse can determine the location of the nearest available equipment and also determine the state of that equipment such as the maintenance due date. The RTLS system has enabled nurses to spend more time with the patients instead of looking for equipments and this has translated to improved patient outcomes such as reduction in the length of stay. In addition, the clinical engineers easily track equipments due for maintenance. The system has other potential applications such as patient tracking and fall detection which is relevant in geriatric care (Bowen et al., 2010).
There challenges which face wide adoption of RTLS include cost and the ease of use. The system is best suited for large facilities and since it involves deployment of an RFID network, it is expensive to develop and to train the users. This technology can be adopted at a lower cost if it is implemented in phases (Innocent, 2012). For instance, in my facility, phase one consisted of equipment tracking while the second phase which is currently under implementation consists of patient status tracking. The cost of training is a one-time cost since only a refresher course is required for the staff to use other system developments since they all have the same interface.
References
Bowen, M. E., Craighead, J., Wingrave, C. A., & Kearns, W. D. (2010). Real-Time Locating
Systems (RTLS) to improve fall detection. Gerontechnology, 9(4), 464-471.
Innocent, K. E. (2012). Using RFID to solve problems in healthcare delivery. Nursing2012
Critical Care, 7(1), 10-11.
Oztekin, A., Pajouh, F. M., Delen, D., & Swim, L. K. (2010). An RFID network design
methodology for asset tracking in healthcare. Decision Support Systems, 49(1), 100-109.
