When asked about what nursing means we think about caring. Caring is acknowledged as the essence of nursing. Nurse-patient relationship is established to be central to the caring process. Currently, nursing is widely being practiced in environments inextricably linked with complex biomedical technology. Technology’s impersonal aspect is perceived to deemphasize the need to know the patient and act as a distraction from the nurse-patient relationship. Nurses are torn between the human caring model of nursing and robot-like attitudes perceived to be created by technology. There are arguments that technology need not impede nurses in developing caring relationships with their patients, but actually enhances caring in the patient-nurse relationship. In combining the technological and caring aspects of their practice, nurses can act as a humane conduit between patient and technology, thus providing the soft, human approach that makes technology acceptable and non-threatening to patients. The challenge facing nursing is to integrate technological competency while focusing on the patient and developing a meaningful relationship. Rapport between nurse and patient is important in patient's healing process and result in cooperation of the patient to the health care regimen.
Combining caring and technology is a challenge for most nurses practicing today. While basic nursing care has not changed, new technologies are introduced at a rate that far surpasses what most of us are comfortable with. As a result, many of us struggle with providing what we know is good care while still meeting the demands of the organizations we work for and the licensing and governing bodies that guide our practice.
Technology has its advantages on patient care namely: assisting nurses in documenting more accurately, keeping patients safe and reducing lengths of stay. There are also disadvantages like: frustration with the amount of time needed to train nurses in using new equipment, work environments that do not support the technology, and the demands of computerized documentation that require regular entries.
Some nurses felt that as technology increased, their clinical judgment and hands-on skills were being adversely affected. They may have been so accustomed to having the machine do their work that they cannot function without these machines.
Nurses themselves recognized that technology has the potential to take them away from patients and erode quality nursing care, undermining patient well-being.
Being mindful of the challenges we face as nurses as we combine the use of technology into the way we take care of people is the first step to changing care delivery. Technology can help nurses provide good care in many ways if we use it with discretion and remember how much the nurse’s presence and caring touch is important to those in our care.
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