Linda posted on September 08, 2008 15:00
Until last week, I don't think I had spent any significant time in a hospital in at least ten years. Last week, I had the opportunity to spend several days there (no, I wasn't the patient) and I was able to observe just how much technology has changed health care.
First, came the entire medical history - all on a laptop, connected to the network wirelessly and kept on a rolling cart. While the history seemed to take forever, I don't doubt that it was quicker and more complete than it would have been if done by hand. When the nurse completed the history, the laptop was wheeled back out into the hallway, freeing up much needed space in the small room we were in.
One thing that seems to take much longer is dispensing medication. There is a whole procedure that I was not able to observe just to get the necessary medications out of the storage cart. Then it is taken to the patient, where the patient's bar code must be scanned. Following that, the barcode on each medication is scanned. I am sure that this procedure reduces errors and more accurately records medication times - but fast it certainly isn't!
Up on the floor, every room had a computer in it. In most rooms, they were mounted directly on the wall. I was hoping for internet access that I could use - but no such luck!
At one point, I asked one of the nurses if the computers made things easier or more difficult. I had asked during a difficult moment, and the look she gave me definitely said that! She told me that there were certain things, like the medical history, that had been made much easier by computerization, but that other things were more difficult. On a different day, another nurse spent 5 minutes or more just trying to get the barcode scaner to actually work.
And should you think that all of the technology means that hospitals are saving paper and that all information is immediately available, that is not the case. My patient went from one area of the hospital to another with a very thick binder than contained print outs of all of his information. I guess you have to be sure that there is access to all of the records even in the event of a system crash, so it all gets printed out. And at one point, the nurse told us that she did not yet have access to the surgery report, and it had been several hours since the surgery was completed.