The Effect of Technologies in the Intensive Care Units: A Case Study of Intelligent Hospital Pavilion
The increase in the rate of adoption of technologies into the health care system has been transforming the manner in which practitioners manage cases related to patients. For instance, technologies have improved the way doctors diagnose patients, collect, store, and access information concerning their progress, and administer medications. However, the emergence of such technologies have also come with concerns about the levels of their effectiveness and security issues related to critical data on patients and staff of the health care institutions. This essay reports the perceived benefits and drawbacks of using technologies at a state-of-the art intensive care unit of Intelligent Hospital Pavilion.
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The video highlights the importance of patient privacy in the intensive care units. This element is one of the most important in the management of patients at any unit within hospitals and other institutions that provide health care services. It is the professional duty of critical care nurses to enhance the dignity of the people under the care (Mlinek & Pierce, 2007). It is imperative noting that that ensuring that the patients have the right is one of the ethical obligations of their practice. The issue of patient privacy also has legal implication. For instance, it is the duty of the nurses to promote the wellbeing of the patients as one of the means of promoting their fundamental human rights. Promoting patient privacy is one of the ways of treating the patients with dignity, which is why the technological measures taken by the hospital to improve patient privacy in the intensive care unit is beneficial to the wellbeing of the patients.
The video also indicates the significant steps that the hospital has undertaken to manage the information of patients in the critical care units. The centralization of patient information in any hospital is one of the most recent improvements in patient data management that has evolved in the recent years. Several advantages are associated with this approach to information management, including the fact that it allows different personnel in charge of managing the patients a chance to access important information on them that would help monitor their progress (Hersh, 2004). Therefore, it is advantageous that the intensive care unit can track communications with other departments since such measures allow the managers to know where communications could be delaying and to initiate the correct corrective procedures. For instance, the manager of the intensive care unit at Intelligent Hospital Pavilion displays the approach to tracking patient specimen along the path to and from other departments that are critical in handling the case.
The video also shows the fact that technologies used in the intensive care unit have improved the manner in which physician diagnose diseases. The most significant contribution of such technologies is the fact that it allows the medical health practitioners a better chance to perform diagnoses that are more accurate and faster than what they would achieve using conventional technologies. The importance of accurate and fast diagnoses in the management of cases in the critical care units cannot be overemphasized. For instance, patients in such care settings are always in need of emergency treatments required to sustain or to prolong their lives. Therefore, the accuracy with which the doctors diagnose their problems and the speed of such activities is of critical importance.
In addition, of importance to the patients is the fact that the emergency rooms are designed to ensure that they promote patient safety. Patient safety is one of the most researches topics because of its association with different categories of patient outcomes, such as the length of stay at the hospitals, the rates of hospital infections, the satisfaction of the patients with the services provided among other outcomes (Matiti & Baillie, 2011). This element touches on both the patients and the caregivers. For instance, the caregivers have to practice in safe environments if they have to realize better patient outcomes. The case study of the hospital in the video indicates the application of technologies in tracking the dosage levels that caregivers administer to the patients. Appropriate doses are critical in the recovery of patients, which is why the technology is useful in the emergency care settings.
However, as much as the technologies depicted in the video have the positive outcomes on patient management as described, it is imperative noting that they could also be an issue. One of the most outstanding issues of the use of the technologies is the fact that it raises the levels of surveillance on the patients using the multiple cameras that are connected to the rooms and linked to the control centers in the office of the manager of the emergency department. While they provide a chance for the managers to monitor the situations in the emergency rooms, they could be one way of limiting patient privacy since the cameras would be taken to spying on them. It is also notable that the digitalization of patient information raises the challenge of data security, which is synonymous with the challenges that the technical world faces across all the fields in which such technologies are applied. The growing levels of information theft occasioned by cybercrime are a scare to the success of the system.
References
Hersh, W. (2004). Health care information technology: progress and barriers. Jama , 292 (18), 2273-2274.
Matiti, M. R., & Baillie, L. (Eds.). (2011). Dignity in healthcare: a practical approach for nurses and midwives . Radcliffe Publishing.
Mlinek, E. J., & Pierce, J. (2007). Confidentiality and privacy breaches in a university hospital emergency department. Academic Emergency Medicine , 4 (12), 1142-1146.
