Digitalization in the work of a registered nurse
Digitalization is changing our world and working enviroments. It is helpful for the working environment but ofcourse there comes some problems as well. I am a registered nurse in public elderly care. A lot of my every day work is connecting and consulting other healthcare professionals, such as doctors, physiotherapists or other nurses, via technology. Every laboratory referrenses I make are through digital working environments. I find that very easy and quick thing to do at work. For example I can run quick emergency lab tests and the doctor who works in other buildings or even in other town can easily find it and make a doctor’s order if needed. Many healthcare specialists do not have time to answer phone calls so we can chat through protected systems. At my work the practical nurses will record our patients every day life and well-being in a digitalized patient information system called OMNI-Pegasos. Now on I will refer to that system shortly as OMNI-Pegasos. In that system we as registered nurses can see how our elderly patients are doing and find out if there is something going on where our expertise is needed, which are typically skin problems, wounds, the effectiveness of medication or family co-operation. In OMNI-Pegasos I can see what the practical nurses are already done for the problem and I can make referrenses to the patient’s healthcare plan site what shoud be done next and the practical nurses or doctors can see what is going on about that. For example the nurses can guide wound care instructions for other professionals. Digitalization is a big part of my work and will continue the developement in nursing.
There is a lot of development working in my field of expertise that I personally find important. Elderly care have many opportunities to use digital working environments already and many more in the future. Many patient cases or doctors appointments can be done through remote consultations when the doctors are elsewhere in healthcare centers or hospitals. Healthcare specialists can also monitor the patients health or rehabilitation through patient information systems. With proper data protection the possibilities the healthcare has is a big deal. Specialists do not need to work in small healthcare centers and the people in the countryside can still have a proper healthcare. Even the elderly people at homes or nursing homes.
Even though the healthcare professionals can use digital working environments easily, there are good preventive healthcare sites for everyone to use such as omaolo.fi or omakanta.fi. There you can find information from your own health and your own doctors appointments or search information about your own diseases or well-being. These services are based on reliable information, and its developers are healthcare professionals. The service focuses on prevention and early support. It has very low costs for both society and the individual because it’s free to use.
As i wrote, digitalization is changing our world and our work environments. In many cases digitalization will help a lot in healthcare, but there is still many things to look through, like the laws and the data protection and also the ethics of these systems. How can we supervise those healthcare robots that are in developmentation right now? How a person find a robot or will in the future be helpful enough? Do we need another human-being with us and socialization as we get old? That is a big question in our every day work today because we know that nursing needs more workers when Finland’s “big generations” gets older. That is people born in 1940-1960. Nobody knows yet where this goes and what is the policy but I am exited to find out. Hopefully I will be a part with these digitalised developments in healthcare.
Utilising ChatGPT
I asked ChatGPT about open digital society:
“An open digital society refers to a system where digital technologies are used to promote transparency, inclusivity, freedom of expression, access to information, democratic participation, and privacy. It is often contrasted with closed or authoritarian digital systems where control, censorship, and surveillance are prominent.” ChatGPT.
I agree the freedom part but I also think that in social media and open digital society we have too much information coming through. Human brain don’t have the ability to use all that info and data which leads to exhaustion, as I could say in Finnish “data-ähky”, too much digital info.
Self evaluation
I see digitalization as a significant and growing part of my own work. As a professional I wouldn’t use AI at my work field to ask for information on patients health. I find that morally wrong and un-ethical. We do have digital tools to improve medication safety when the system uses AI to alert when something is wrong but that needs human to react and check that alert. When asked about healthcare speciality or healthcare in Finland the AI tool don’t do it correctly. There are also data protection and personal protection issues when using AI at work field. Artificial intelligence should not make decisions independently, but it could facilitate and speed up frequently repeated process steps. A person must always make the approval and decision.
This assignment made me think about digital tools in practice and it’s problems. Digitalization is changing our practise but we as professionals need to know what we are doing. Data safety and data protection is a huge issue here. We need to be aware now and in the future.
Blogs that I commented: