"the future days"

Kind of an offshoot of the "good ol days" thread. Using your imagination and seeing how technology has come these days, how do you thing nursing/ medical field will be in 30 years from now? When we can look back and say, remember when? ( cant say that now, but I love the stories!)
Worse. Too much technology and not enough contact time with patients. I already experience that and I'm not even a nurse. I do hope however that electronic charting software becomes more user-friendly.

robots will bring take specimens to lab, bring meds to/from pharmacy (exists now in some places). Hospital doors will automatically lock at 9 pm and NO ONE can get in without employee badge. (dreaming)

Potassium pills will become smaller so all these little old folks will be able to swallow them!GoLytely will not be a huge gallon jug but a small pill!Ativan 2mg po will be a nursing order so we can give it to anxious family members!

Quote from classicdamerobots will bring take specimens to lab, bring meds to/from pharmacy (exists now in some places). Hospital doors will automatically lock at 9 pm and NO ONE can get in without employee badge. (dreaming)

Quote from classicdameHospital doors will automatically lock at 9 pm and NO ONE can get in without employee badge. (dreaming)

ICU with no more cords to untangle.

The technology school in the area has an expo every spring, where students demonstrate their senior year projects. I went last year and one of the exhibits advertised was a cordless EKG machine! I didn't get to see it, but it sure would be great to slap on those EKG leads without having to untangle those darn cords. Maybe that way I could actually catch that paroxysmal AF on a 12-lead. If it could be adapted to the 5-lead tele monitors then I could keep the $5,000 tele box out of the hands of my CIWA patient who thinks it is a flask of whiskey.

Quote from classicdamerobots will bring take specimens to lab, bring meds to/from pharmacy (exists now in some places). Hospital doors will automatically lock at 9 pm and NO ONE can get in without employee badge. (dreaming)

Quote from MN-NurseWe don't have robots, but a pneumatic tube system similar to those you find in bank drive thrus works pretty well for sending stuff to/from pharm/lab/blood banks/materials/other nursing stations.Our hospital doors automatically lock and you cannot get in without a badge without coming through the ER entrance.

Quote from WittySarcasmI want that at our LTC. Because we've had too many family members come in after 9pm and just cause so much trouble. Or get upset that social services isn't there with the paper. Yeah, come during normal buisness hours

Great thread! How about this! A patient is hooked up to a machine that monitors his condition. When his lab values are critical, his condition deteriorates and warrants a call at 2 am to a MD about further orders , an automated "nurse" comes on and reads data to him. MD can not give her an attitude because it's a machine reading and instead he has to listen and pay attention. MD gives orders to the machine, the computer processess the orders, the nurse gets them, signs off and off she goes to save the patient. I don't know - it's good to dream sometimes.

I think there will definitely be more bedside technology that will intervene via automated protocols. I also believe there will be little if any human contact, bedside-type nursing being done. I think the RN will basically be overseeing everything from a central location and if patients desire or want hands on human performed personal care they will either have to hire an aide or family will have to perform it. In the very beginnning of hospitals as such it was rather expected that the majority of the personal care would be provided by family members. In the older style military hospitals up to and during most of the Viet Nam war the soldier patients assisted each other a great deal with feeding, pushing wheelchairs and walking each other in the halls. They also looked out for each other and alerted the nurses when there was a problem.So my projected model of the hospital nurse in the future would make the big business boys happy....hardly any nurses just machines that don't need to be paid or earn benefits.