University of Pittsburgh Using Technology in Nursing Initiatives
The University of Pittsburgh is using patient-monitoring technology to help train nurses working in “step down” units, while nursing students are increasingly trained using simulators, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
Patients are moved to step down units as an intermediary step between being transferred from intensive care units to hospitals’ acute care departments.
The patient-monitoring system used in step down units automatically tracks patients’ vital signs and alerts nurses when a patient’s heart rate or breathing pattern is abnormal.
The system, made by OBS Medical, helps nurses react “very early on when the patient starts to develop instability, sometimes when there isn’t even what we would consider to be a significant change in vital signs,” according to Marilyn Hravnak, an acute care nursing professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Nurs ing.
Nurse Training
The School of Nursing also uses a mannequin equipped with sensors and other human characteristics for specialized training. The tool, called SimMan, allows nurses to practice taking vital signs and shocking abnormally beating hearts back into a regular rhythm.
Speaking as the patient from a control room, faculty members also use the simulator to help nursing students practice communicating with patients.
Hravnak said the mannequin “gives you the ability to present [nurses] with a large variety of cases that we can’t always be certain they will come across in a clinical setting” (Roth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 3/3).
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