NurseCrisis.com

Ok, I’ll admit it.  With a new grandbaby to spoil, Christmas to prepare for, and this ongoing adjustment to retirement, I totally missed the recent article/press release from the UAB Hospital and the Cerner Corporation.

The entire article should still be available in the Google section at the bottom of the pages on our sister website:  NurseCrisis.com.

Thanks to a reader in Mobile, Alabama for bringing it to my attention.  This same reader wanted to know what had happened to this blog.

Just a quick note to let you know that we’re back. Maybe not on a daily basis; but certainly several times a week.

The website grows based on the questions that come in.  The same will be true of the blog.  Please send your comments and questions to either:   info@nursecrisis.com

Back to the Cerner Corporation’s solution to the nurse shortage.  They make the point that by having a patient’s monitors hooked up to a centralized EMR (electronic medical record) we nurses will be relieved of hours and hours of paperwork.  Errors will be minimized,  the patients will be safer…..everybody wins.

So what is the reality?

As of Dec. 2nd, 2009,   the UAB Hospital System Reclaimed More Than 93,000 Nursing Hours by Connecting Medical Devices to Its Electronic Medical Record.

Does anyone believe that those 93,000 hours will be used to enable the same number of nurses to provide more personalized care to the same number of patients?

Or is more realistic to expect the corporate bean counters to figure out a way to reduce their nursing expense (fewer nurses);  or will they simply increase the nurse/patient ratio?

Many of you are already working under this “new and improved” system. Won’t you please share with us the effects most noticeable to you in your career?

I accept my status as a “cyber-dinosaur”,  and now even a retired “dinosaur”.

My objectivity went out the window over twenty-five years ago when the corporations stepped in and changed our health care system forever.

It’s difficult to recall any change that occurred during that time that offered more to the staff than to the corporate “bottom line”.

Till next time,

Gayle