Thursday 29 November 2018

TELENURSING: LIFE BEGINS AT THE END OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE

Telenursing refers to the use of telecommunications and information technology in the provision of nursing services whenever a large physical distance exists between patient and nurse, or between any numbers of nurses. As a field, it is part of telehealth and telemedicine and has many points of contacts with other medical and non-medical applications, such as telediagnosis, teleconsultation, and telemonitoring. Telenursing involves the use of electromagnetic channels to transmit voice and video commutations
Hardware for Telenursing is Video Conferencing              
Types of Softwares used in Telenursing

1.      Documentation tools
2.      LMV systems
3.      Decision aid software programs


Tele Nursing is a subset of telehealth in which technology is used to deliver nursing care and conduct nursing practice. It is a specific to a nursing as a profession Telenursing is not a new mode of health care delivery rather it is an evolving mode of health care delivery that began from the advent of telephone use in 1876.
Types of Telenursing:
1.      Remote Monitoring
2.      Interactive Telenursing Services
3.      Store and forward Telenursing
4.      Specialist and primary care consultation
5.      Imaging Services
Methods of delivering Telenursing
1.      Point-point connections using private network
2.      Web-based e-Health Patient service sites
3.      Networked Program
4.      Connections to monitoring center from Home
5.      Primary/specialty care to the home connection
Applications of Telenursing
1.      Home  care
2.      Patient Consultations
3.      Telephone Triage
4.      Remote monitoring
5.      Chronic disease management
6.      Case management
Benefits of Using Telenursing
Nurse’s benefits
1.      Saving time
2.      More efficient seeing distant patients
3.      Rural providers can receive continue education
4.      Available as a specialty program
Patient benefits:
1.      Increased access to healthcare services
2.      Decreases waiting time and unnecessary visits to ED departments
3.      Reduces cost
4.      Provides immediate site information
5.      Medicare reimbursement

Disadvantages:
1.      Absence of direct hands on or face to face interaction
2.      Technical difficulties
3.      Increase liability risk
4.      Inability to provide patients with information to make an informed decision.

Travel nursing technology can emerge, Telenursing practices will continue to evolve. He scope off nursing practice will continue to expand and with this expansion registered nurses will have to make certain that they possess the necessary technical clinical knowledge to provide safe, competent, compassionate and ethical care. Travel nurses will be able to follow the guidelines of the National initiative for Telehealth Frame work as well as any guidelines Framework as well as any guideline or polices that surface. Telenursing is one of the various innovative and improved methods of providing nursing care that directly effects register nurses and expands their capacity to practice nursing in a relatively new arena as well as directly affecting clients. 



   

Thursday 15 November 2018

Nurses: Caring patients with Injuries

Nurses perform a vital and strategic role at the forefront of care. Nurses use their capability to assess and treat wounds and ostomies. PTs reassure ambulation and proper positioning of patients, along with promoting optimal function. Pharmacists have the ability to examine a patient’s in-hospital and home medications for interactions, communicate with physicians and encourage any changes in medications. OTs assists with patient transfers and re-positioning while providing helpful resources and equipment recommendations. Registered dieticians and nutritionists assist in wound healing by performing a thorough nutritional assessment, looking for signs of malnutrition or other dietary deficiencies. This assessment determines nutrition needs that can aid in the healing process.
“Skin and Body injuries are extremely prevalent,”


Re-positioning patients every two hours is a high priority to avoid pressure injuries. The need to examine potential problem areas of the body also is a necessity for healthcare clinicians. Some areas are ones clinicians may not expect or regularly check. Hospital-acquired pressure injuries are among the conditions considered preventable by the Centres for Medicaid and Medicare Services. Thus, healthcare facilities are not reimbursed for treating these injuries when they are acquired by a patient in the hospital. A thorough skin assessment is very important when a patient arrives. This protects a healthcare facility from potential litigation and also serves as a baseline for caring for the patient. That assessment is critical to the healthcare system and the patient. If the facility doesn’t document these injuries in the first 24 hours, Hospitals are legally liable from Medicare. Effective nursing management strategies for adults with severe traumatic brain injury (STBI) are still a remarkable issue and a difficult task for neurologists, neurosurgeons, and neuro nurses

A list of justified indications and scientific rationale for nursing management of these patients are continuously evolving. The objectives of the study are to analyse the pertinently available research and clinical studies that demonstrate the nursing management strategies for adults with STBI and to synthesize the available evidence based on the review in the included studies, data were extracted and evaluated according to the objective. Narrative analysis was adopted to write this review. Patients with STBI have poor prognosis and require quality care for maximizing patients' survival. With a thorough knowledge and discernment of care of such patients, nurses can improve these patients' neurological outcomes.

Thursday 8 November 2018


Nurses practice in a variety of roles within healthcare organizations, whether they may be public or private, inpatient or outpatient. RNs also may hold non-traditional roles in insurance corporations, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare device manufacturers, or software application vendors. RNs can practice clinically by providing direct patient care; they can hold management positions; and they can also support clinical nursing and patient care activities, such as the work done by informatics nurses.
As a nurse, free time is hard to come by and time management is a crucial part of thriving in your career. Well, believe it or not, some of these websites can be more useful than what you learned during training. You need to be informed on the latest technology and healthcare developments, as well as constantly improve your productivity and patient understanding in order to be a successful nurse. This is where reading comes in handy – a sound nursing blog that does can really make a difference in your career informative and engaging and daily work routine.


Informatics nurses are registered nurses with a clinical background, which is critical to understanding the workflow of clinical nurses as well as the working environment of the various care settings.
There are a number of different types of nurses in the informatics field. The American Nurses Association's (ANA) Nursing Informatics: Scope and Standards of Practice defines an informatics nurse specialist (INS) as an RN who has been formally prepared at the graduate level in informatics or a related field, and an informatics nurse (IN) as a generalist who has informatics experience but does not have graduate level education on the subject.
The ANA Scope and Standards of Practice have listed the major functional areas for informatics nurses, which include:
·         Administration, leadership and management - either directly with clinical informatics departments or in combination with other functional areas such as serving as project managers.
·         Analysis - using data to synthesize knowledge, inform decision support, and manage outcomes as well as taxonomies.
·         Compliance and integrity management - helping make sure organizations are meeting all the national laws and standards such as HIPAA, FDA, Joint Commission etc.
·         Consultation - serving both internally or externally as a resource.
·         Coordination, facilitation, and integration - serving as the translator between end-users and IT experts.
·         Development - translating user requirements into solutions.
·         Education and professional development - ranges from teaching the end-user to use a device or application to educating the next generation of nurses and the general public.
·         Policy development and advocacy - being an advocate for consumers, hospital units, and the institution as a whole; also helping shape policies and standards at the state, national and organizational level.
·         Research and evaluation - conducting research in a variety of informatics topics that impacts both caregivers and consumers.


Thursday 1 November 2018


 Emergency First Aid for Nurses

Emergency is a dynamic for nurses to know what to do when faced with an emergency. For instance, we should all know what to do with a object of a road accident or someone with an injury as simple as a burnt finger. These cases happen every day, and most of the time, nurses are expected to make available for first aid care. We should learn not only how to stay as peaceful as possible, but also what to do while waiting for help to attain.

Nurses should Keep DRS in mind

·         Danger (check the scene for danger), 

·         Response (check for the victim’s consciousness) and 

·         Send someone to call for help.

Also, Nurses should remember the ABCDs in giving first aid:

·         Airway, 

·         Breathing, perform 

·         CPR (if necessary)/ Control major bleeding and 

·         Defibrillate, if available (and if necessary).

Is the object’s airway (mouth and throat) free from foreign objects that may cause blockage? Is the victim breathing?  Does the prey have severe bleeding? The three P‘s must also be kept in mind when giving first aid. These are the responsibilities of every first aider:
·         To Preserve life and give initial emergency care and treatment to people who are sick or injured,
·         to Protect unresponsive/ unconscious people, to Prevent the condition of the victim to worsen and to
·          Promote the victim’s recovery.


Cuts and scrapes need proper care to avoid infection or complications. The first things you should do are to clean the wound and stop the bleeding.
·         It is best to rinse the wound with cool water. Thorough cleaning reduces the risk of infection and certain complications like tetanus.
·         Remember that you have to stop bleeding by applying gauze or a clean piece of cloth to the wound firmly but gently.
·         You can add more gauze if blood soaks through, and continue applying pressure.
Puncture wounds, cuts, scrapes or amputations may cause external bleeding that needs immediate medical attention. Prior to giving care, make sure that you don protective gloves or any barrier between you and the patient that can minimize transmission of disease.
·         Bleeding may be controlled with direct pressure. You can use a sterile dressing, a clean piece of cloth, diaper or a sanitary napkin.
·         Do not remove the dressing even when it gets soaked with blood. Instead, add more material and continue pressure.
·         Do not move limb if you suspect any fractures. Otherwise, elevate the wound higher than the level of the heart.
·         As soon as bleeding is controlled, apply dressing and observe for shock.
Nosebleeds are very common, and are usually caused by dryness, allergies, infection, increased blood pressure and aggressive nose picking among others.
Bleeding from the nose for more than twenty (20) minutes may be considered a medical emergency and immediate medical attention is necessary.
·         To help someone whose nose is bleeding, assist him to sit upright and lean forward. This will help in reducing the blood pressure in the veins of the nose, thus, minimizing the bleeding. Also, leaning forward is necessary to prevent the victim from swallowing the blood.
·         Squeezing the soft part of the nose using the thumb and the index finger for about ten to fifteen minutes or placing an icepack on the bridge of the nose may also help stop the bleeding.

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