The past few years of the COVID-19 pandemic have served as a magnifying glass to the healthcare industry, bringing fresh awareness to many long-standing challenges. The shortage of nurses and the high pressure they’re under, are just a few of the mounting global problems. Time-consuming manual tasks and workflows, increased patient care demands, along with imposed work in addition to their original duties have all combined to contribute to an excessive physical and mental burden upon these caregivers. In turn, this is driving them away from these professions and ultimately having a critical impact on the quality of patient care. According to recent industry surveys [1][2][3], a significant number of incumbent nurses have been considering leaving their clinical positions, many of whom are veterans with decades of experience.
Celebrating International Nurses Day every May 12th presents a special opportunity to call for more immediate and concrete action from the industry to provide them better support. Indeed, technology as a continuously evolving process may facilitate the provision of better support and more advanced solutions are being made available to address such problems. With the latest development in health IT and engineering, and by taking over the repetitive and redundant tasks and offering intelligent assistance in their place, frontline nurses are better able to generate information with it being at their fingertips more promptly and so take faster and more appropriate action. In addition, it is by adopting better connectivity and automation at every stage within the day-to-day nursing workflow, that this can be better optimized to improve the quality of health care for patients as well as provide a more satisfying environment for both patient and caregiver.
From out-patients to admissions, or from the emergency department to the critical care unit or the operating room, frequent patient transfers have become a headache for nurses who need to complete the complex admission procedures as rapidly as possible in order to save more time for subsequent diagnosis and treatment. Approximately 50% of nurses from a previous survey put referrals and transfer processing as the most manual tasks in their everyday work [2]. Generating the required patient's vital signs, and then transmitting the data when switching between multiple devices, along with the large-volume of administrative paperwork, can all combine to prevent caregivers from providing emergency care at the first instance.
Mindray BeneVision™ N1 patient monitor provides an innovative means that can adapt to the clinical needs by incorporating functions of the plug-and-play module, transport devices, and independent bedside monitor and combining them into one compact device. In different transition scenarios, the palm-sized device provides high-acuity and wide-ranging parameters, with monitoring and a continuously clear display throughout the process; when the patient arrives at a new point of care, BeneVisionTM N1 can also automatically synchronize the patient's identity, upload any information recorded before and during the transfer, and integrate patient data, all by simply being plugged into the monitoring slot. It offers an uninterrupted patient monitoring solution that effectively alleviates the manual handling of these burdensome tasks being addressed by nurses. The higher level of connectivity and accessibility, along with the exceptional reliability of the device ensure the seamless monitoring of patients at every point of care.
To evaluate patient status precisely and timely, nurses in various departments need to record certain vital signs of patients in detail and as an aggregated result to assess underlying health risks. Heavy workload and high risk of error from manual assessment and transcription have long been associated with the task, as each subtle parameter change could potentially make a difference. One study showed that more than 30% of all manual observation sets were incomplete or had an incorrectly calculated early warning aggregate score [5].
To address the challenge, new development of vital signs monitoring system has been realized that offers a full range of measurements and an integrated automated transcription tool to help speed up assessments, thereby reducing manual error. Mindray’s new VS9 Vital Signs Monitors, launched last year, have managed to further maximize clinical efficiency with the advanced Early Warning Score (EWS) solution and fully customizable observation profiles. In compliance with all EWS standards, this competent system provides acute and automated patient scoring along with customizable escalation messages to support more timely clinical intervention. The comprehensive patient status documentation, with up to 30 customizable manual input settings and flexible screen layout and parameters design, enables nurses to offer better patient-centric care based on the varying patient groups, departments, or clinical tasks.
Busy clinical scenarios like ICU, the OR or ER require instant data processing from patient monitoring to allow caregivers to gain prompt and easily understandable notifications so as to make correct decisions. Unnecessary complexity, given the large amount of patient data generated simultaneously, only puts additional burden on nursing workloads; which is especially the case where a bedside alarm has been triggered and they are required to quickly identify essential information and evaluate the patient’s condition. Alarm fatigue may also be identified as another problem where too many false alerts cause caregivers to become desensitized to these alarms, eventuating in alarms being missed or in delayed response.
To ensure high-quality monitoring and alarm management, smart tools and solutions are needed to enhance clinical responsiveness and workflow efficiency. Mindray's status alarm combines multiple parameters from all bedside equipment, including Mindray patient monitors, infusion pumps and ventilators, as well as 3rd-party devices which are connected via the BeneLink interfacing module. Through intelligent data analysis, it uses direct visualization to help better determine abnormalities and notify the deterioration of a patient's status. The full-connect IT solution, through filtering and prioritizing alarms and sending them to designated care providers, enables data access at any time anywhere, freeing nurses from repetitive bedside checks and enabling them to react more promptly in busy scenarios.
Due to overwhelming workloads and the lack of highly skilled nurses, another concern receiving increased attention is one of infusion safety. Large numbers of inpatient admissions, frequent patient transfers, and multiple units and dose parameters all contribute to the complexity of infusion management and thereby increase the potential for manual error. According to the Emergency Care Research Institute (ECRI), medication errors from infusion pumps can have significant ramifications on patient safety and rank among the world’s top ten health technology hazards [6].
Advanced technologies should be introduced to ensure infusion safety in busy and stressful settings. Mindray’s BeneFusion n Series infusion system with the SafeDose™ Drug Library Management tool features the proven color-coding drug library and parameters auto-filling functions. With bright digital color labels to signify the differentiated drugs more straightforwardly, nurses are able to select and verify the correct drug with more ease and confidence. The automatic fill-in functions of key parameters, including infusion mode, drug concentration, dosage unit, and rate, help effectively save time as well as minimize the potential for mistakes from the manual input of settings. Seamless integration and synergy for this sub-system via InfusionView™ to the central monitoring system enables remote and centralized monitoring for more timely responsiveness. The whole system ensures the highest level of infusion acuity and thereby contributes to the advancement for quality care.
The ultimate purpose of all innovation is to provide better support to personnel in their everyday tasks. However, it is an unending pursuit and by delving deeper into seemly normal workflows, one can always find potential for new advances, not to mention the large number of challenges as yet unfaced. By shedding some light on the urgent demand for nursing care, Mindray’s PMLS solutions provide maximum support to every facet for frontline caregivers, enabling them to work more efficiently with improved confidence. As such, by caring more for the caregivers, higher quality healthcare is being made available to more people.
Reference:
[1] Healthcare IT News: Report: 90% of nurses considering leaving the profession in the next year Here>
[2] Hospital IQ: Nursing in Crisis: Hospital IQ Survey Highlights Significant Patient Care Challenges due to Hospital Staffing Shortages Here>
[3] National Nurse United: National nurse survey reveals significant increases in unsafe staffing, workplace violence, and moral distress Here>
[4] Nursing Times: How can we address the rising number of nurses experiencing burnout? Here>
[5] Clifton, D A, et al. (2015). ‘Errors’ and omissions in paper-based early warning scores: the association with changes in vital signs – a database analysis.
[6] BRIEF, E. (2019). Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2020. ECRI Inst, 9.