Introduction
Direct patient care is a care that is provided to patients by staff members of a hospital. Technology has improved work done and made it more efficient in giving patient’s records. There are several technologies being used in hospitals in order to serve patients efficiently. This paper will look at two forms of technologies used in direct patient care discussing when they are being used, their value, and lastly, strengths and drawbacks of each technology.
Health care information Technology
Health care Information Technology for patients is the use of electronic medical records whereby information for patients are processed and kept. These records include past medical history, laboratory tests, reports, medical prescriptions among others. Use of smart phones, laptops and tablets has been used widely in hospitals where information is readily available. Staggers, Weir, and Phansalk (2009) argue that the value of electronic medical record ensures that information is well managed. This increases health work productivity by keeping in patient information confidential, enabling quick access to records, and reuse of information and reduced health care costs. Reduced health care costs. They also discussed the technology benefits as that security features are ensured whereby patients are made private only accessible to a patient’s doctor and not even those who keep manual records. In addition, human error is reduced by this technology whereby a database provides doctors with all elated information of a disease or symptom including the drug to administer to the patient.
One of the weaknesses of health information technology include slow access whereby staff are not conversant with the systems and their software thus, taking too long to serve one customer. Also, the system has a database that stores all medicine description which leads to difficulty in giving an alternative of a drug to a patient. For staff to be smart in using these systems there must be an extensive training that can cost hospital much money. Lastly, ethical concerns are aspects to look at in the use of this technology.
Barcode Technology
Barcode technology enables real-time confirmation of patient registration, medication given, dose required, and time of administration . Barcode technology is of great value to hospitals such as ensuring accuracy of information and that are faster than human eye as according to (Grotting, Young, Kelly, Brown, & Trohimovich, 2002), their tests are that they are accurate with the rate of 1 error per 10,000,000 characters with human eyes minimal unlike to human eyes that make errors frequently. That makes errors frequently. They are easy to use and this technology requires no expert in it. Medication errors especially in pharmacies are eliminated with the use of this technology. In addition, blood transfusion is no longer having trouble with the use of this technology because it ensures blood transfusion is no longer going to the wrong patient.
According to the weakness of barcode technology is that thebarcodesctoof vendor-applied barcodes on dose medication wrapping. There is also resistant to this new technology by the organization. The only major weakness is slow adoption of technology in hospitals with nurse and other staff being reluctant to the change that brings accuracy and improve quality of patient care.
References
Grotting, J., Young, M., Kelly, J., Brown, M. M., & Trohimovich, B. (2002). The effect of barcode-enabled Point-of-care technology on patient safety. Bridge Medical, Inc.
Staggers, N., Weir, C., & Phansalk, S. (2009). Patient Safety and Health Information Technology: Role of the Electronic Health Record. In Patient safety and quality: An evidence-based handbook for nurses.
Appendices
Figure 1.1: electrical medical record software. Retrieved from http://www.ehr-medical-software.com/landing/lp3.03.htm?gclid=CI_qt7j_oLkCFUXKtAodmVgAuw
Figure 1.2: barcode technology. Retrieved from http://www.riverbendmarketing.com/samples/white-paper-1.pdf
Figure 1.2: barcode technology. Retrieved from http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/repurposed-inventions/barcode-save-your-life.htm
