Digital Nurses Talk about Their Mobile Experiences

The Hospital District of Southwest Finland has been using Medanets mobile point-of-care solutions since 2015. Now the users of these mobile solutions, or digital nurses, are talking about the suitability of mobile tools to their nursing routines. This blog article was compiled from the Medanets experiences of nurses employed in the various units of the Hospital District of Southwest Finland, Turku Region.

A Change in the Right Direction

The exploitation of point-of-care technology is a major advancement and mobile documentation is the cutting-edge clue to a modern workplace. Clearly, work equipment has to bring work some added value, meaning that it has to lessen the work load and make things easier. Mobile documentation does this by advanced means. When nurses do not have to take the time to open the computer to do documentation separately, working becomes more efficient. For once, there is change for the better.

Mobile documentation has been received positively. It is good for the things involved in documentation to become faster. The time saved by mobile documentation can be used for nursing, which provides more interaction between nurses and patients. This also facilitates the flow of work as nurses can mark everything down and check previous measurement results straight away. They have to go to the office less often, which means less strain on their feet.

The Nurse’s Mainstay

Without a doubt, mobile documentation improves the quality of documentation. Scanning through the patient data ascertains that the data being recorded concerns the right patient. Values measured earlier can be browsed easily, for example, while the nurse is beside the patient. The values are displayed in the Electronic Health Record (EHR) immediately, being visible to all who access the system. Having the present situation thus visible eliminates the chance of giving a medicine twice, for example. The data is quickly accessible to doctors as well—and not on some piece of paper in the nurse’s pocket. If patient data can be kept pretty much in real time, it promotes patient safety.

For example, the monitoring of an acutely ill patient is displayed immediately since the data is displayed in the systems in the time it takes to record it while beside the patient.

It is then easier for others to continue working after the shift changes. The appropriateness of having right timing has often proved advantageous to nurses, for example, in the event of an emergency. The app features as the nurse’s mainstay in many respects. For example, nurses do not have to remember the figures and this reduces the chances of erroneous documentation.

Mobile documentation is also significant in terms of occupational safety, for example, during a power outage or software update. After a system interruption, the data recorded via the app is transferred directly to the right place in the EHR without anyone having to engage in tiresome copy and paste work.

A Wonderful and Perfectible Reform

When developing new work equipment, sufficient orientation and reasonable introduction time must be allowed. Using the mobile documentation app can be learned quickly, however. For users who are accustomed to smart phones, it is fairly easy. Orientation and training seem to have been sufficient and even now knowledge passes quickly from one person to another. After all, the best way of learning how to use a mobile device is by using it.

Mobile documentation is a wonderful reform and it would be good to develop it further. For instance, access to mobile documentation should be encouraged more and its potential should be expanded. One day, perhaps, stationary computers will become entirely a thing of the past and all documentation can be done beside the patient. Nurses have been asked to give their opinions about mobile documentation and to talk about its pros and cons. Generally, this has also had the effect of improving the product.

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