Through the Eyes of the Nurse: Changes in Healthcare

Nursing in the twenty-first century is a far cry from what Florence Nightingale performed back in the 1800’s. High Tech medical devises have driven many hands-on procedures into antiquity. RN’s who have been in the field for a while have seen many changes in the way healthcare does business—and it IS a business. I recently sat down with nurses who’d been in the field for ten years or more to find out what the biggest changes they’d seen. Here are their top three responses. 1) Decrease in length of time the patient can remain in hospital care. Driven in part by insurance company demands, doctors are discharging patients earlier in their recovery than ever before. By doing so, it strips nurses or other medical professionals from their duties, and delegates the burden for proper care to the patients themselves, or to family and loved ones, many of whom have not been medically trained. 2) Technological advances. Medicine today pushes a button on electronic devises to perform many of the functions nurses used to do at the patient’s bedside. These breakthroughs in technology have allowed streamlining of care, while providing more protection from infection for the medical professional. It’s typical on a hospital ward today to be assigned three and four times as many patients as in the past. 3) Delegation of duties to others skilled workers. Most hospitals and skilled nursing facilities now employ nursing assistants and patient care technicians who are trained to perform a limited number of specific patient care duties that were once the sole responsibility of the nurse. This allows the nurse to oversee many more patients at one time. Throughout the profession, the need for all medical personnel is paramount. In some cases, drastic shortages of health care workers could be placing patients at risk. People of all ages are abandoning other careers to enter medicine. While it’s true that “Mr. Gadget” has replaced Nurse Nightingale’s candlelight bedside vigil and hospitals are trying to cut costs by streamlining treatment protocols, necessity will always drive the world of medicine. And good, caring people are exactly what we will always need to care for our sick!