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Friday, June 21, 2013

Charting verses nursing

I agree with the Happy Hospitalist as he writes the following:
Neither medicine nor nursing is practiced at the bedside anymore.  Charting has consumed our professions.  Charting is the act of writing and documenting patient care details. Do you want to know where your doctor or nurse is?  More than likely, they have their heads buried in a computer somewhere far away from your every need.
Yes, it is true.  Charting has overtaken the medical profession.  And it's not just nursing.  Doctors do this too.  I visit my doctor, and he sits before me, never touching me, never looking at me, barely picking his eyes up off his little lap top.

Why do we chart?  Many reasons here:
  • Cover your ass
  • To bill
  • To get paid
  • If you don't chart it you didn't do it
  • Because you have to
  • Because Obamacare demands electronic charting now (which studies show has not increased the speed of charting, it's actually slowed it down)
  • Other
Thoughts?  Be nice!

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3 comments:

Phoenix Fire Falconry said...

I've come into the medical profession only a few years ago, so electronic charting has been pretty much the practice for me. There was some exposure to paper charting while in school. Computer charting is soooooo much easier to read, and I don't have to go hunt for files. I can research what the doctors and nurses have said about the patient in my own Respiratory Cave before I go out to give treatment.

Anonymous said...

He's right.

Unknown said...

There is unique challenge within all hospitals when it concerns any thing electronic. Charting being the one most commonly shared among all healthcare staff. It's like giving a farmer a smart phone and telling him how useful it is. Then you go off to the next farmer to give him his. Meanwhile the first farmer found a great use for his smartphone as a paper weight. Just like language, if you do not understand it, you are just hearing random sounds. Yet you know the person is trying to communicate with you(how frustrating is that!!). Tech is the same way if you do not have the concept of it down.
Now charting versus nursing is a temporary market thing. Tech companies roll out their latest and greatest in waves. At the moment we have the foundation of electronic charting being established. In the future charting will be a thing of the past. Even your signature will turn from written to some kind of bioscan(finger print, retinal scan). The greatest flaw in healthcare is it's labor. Can you trust that vital signs are absolute when reading others charting? Can you remember everything that occurred and what ventilator changes you made and the exact time you made them? I was on a project last year with the CDC in which we were developing clothing and accessories that constantly monitored vitals and EEG in real time as well as ambient particles.

This is the future of healthcare. Devices will be charting in realtime. All devices will be registered to the patient ID and send wireless data to track and trend patients. This data will shared nation wide via the HIS. This will also aid in any studies being done. Precise data may reveal a bigger picture of our approach to procedures and reveal answers to questions we have today. With the development of organ printing, the approach of treating causes not symptoms, and the development of robot autonomy. We might just find that treating machines that treat patients will be healthcare's new labor force.