Nurses need adequate training on new devices, healthcare tech

Nurses must be given adequate training on new products and devices as the work they do becomes more integrated with health information technology, nursing leaders and technology experts say. Also, care must be taken to make sure technology doesn't take too much attention away from the patient, they noted.

“Nurses probably enter and see the largest amount of data that's put into the electronic health record,” Pam Cipriano, American Nurses Association president, said in an interview with Modern Healthcare. “They're really important in terms of data collection, data documentation and transmission of that information. In addition, they work with a lot of medical-device data and will be more involved as data are exchanged with settings outside the hospital and the primary-care office.”

Cipriano's message was echoed by Jolene Lyons and Kelly Spivey, both with Franklin, Tenn.-based health IT consultant Gene Burton & Associates, when they gave a presentation on nurses and IT at the annual Healthcare Facilities Symposium and Expo being held Sept. 30-Oct. 2 in Chicago.

They highlighted how a recent online job description for a registered nurse noted that nurses were expected to ensure operation of equipment, troubleshoot equipment malfunctions, and evaluate new equipment and techniques.

“We don't teach 'troubleshooting malfunction' in nursing school,” said Lyons, a project manager at GBA and a former intensive care-unit nurse.

She added that, when equipment malfunctions occur in the operating room, “the doctor looks at the nurse and says 'Fix it. Now.'”

Lyons and Spivey, a GBA vice president, noted how today's nursing workforce includes representatives from four generations who all have different experiences with and perspectives on health IT.

The “veterans” were born before 1946 and were introduced to health IT in their 40s.

“High tech for them was electric typewriters,” Lyons said.

The baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, were introduced to clinical use of computers in their 30s, while Generation X nurses, born between 1964 and 1980, “were born into technology,” Lyons said.

Generation Xers make up the largest portion of the nurse workforce, while Generation Y, born between 1980 and 2000, are currently the smallest, but they are having a huge impact on the growing use of smart phone technology in healthcare. This includes using phones as scanners, Spivey said, adding that the typical bar-code scanning devices “are so 1990s.”

While some older nurses can take or leave the new technology, Spivey said they also can be the biggest cheerleaders for the use of lean techniques and other methods for increasing efficiency.

“Gen X and Y nurses don't remember having to take 100 steps to get some gauze,” she said.

Spivey and Lyons advocated the use of simulation training to both prepare nurses for the use of new equipment and for testing device interoperability. Nurses must practice using new technology before using it at the bedside, Lyons said, because seeing staff struggle with a new device is a certain way to drive down patient satisfaction.

Follow Andis Robeznieks on Twitter: @MHARobeznieks