When Devices Do the Thinking for RNs, What Training Still Matters?

By Sheena Jones. (Sheena is an LPN in training to be an RN at Dutchess Community College, Poughkeepsie, NY.)

So I’m sitting at home on a rare day off and I get a phone call. It’s the supervisor trying to locate one of the many devices each staff member has to sign in and out at the beginning and end of each shift. The hospital I work for uses bar code scanners, wireless computers, PDAs, and Vocera badges. These things are supposed to reduce errors and in general make the jobs of staff members easier. Once I get to work I feel like I have to put on a utility belt to carry all of these devices.

With all of these machines to think for me, I wonder if all of the schooling I’m enduring to go from my LPN to RN is obsolete. Yes, compassion and empathy can’t be taught or replaced by technology. But sometimes it seems to me that a technology-savvy teenager could do much of this job, as long as she could stomach the visuals at the bedside. I remember studying night and day for an exam about calculating medication dosages, only to discover that the computers give the exact dosage and that drugs come from the pharmacy just as they should be given.

Maybe we are a little bit dependent on technology. You should see the mass panic when there is an electrical surge. Nurses often waste time finding computers on wheels (affectionately known as […]

2016-11-21T13:18:47-05:00March 15th, 2010|career, students|5 Comments
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Why Don’t Drug Labels Make the Actual Harms and Benefits Clear?

By Jacob Molyneux, blog editor/senior editor

How can we know if a drug really works? Gary Schwitzer, publisher of HealthNewsReview.org (an incisive Website that grades the quality of health news reporting) addresses this question on his blog this week by drawing attention to a recent perspective piece published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). It’s called “Lost in Transmission — FDA Drug Information That Never Reaches Clinicians” and it states the problem clearly:

The 2009 federal stimulus package included $1.1 billion to support comparative-effectiveness research about medical treatments. No money has been allocated — and relatively little would be needed — to disseminate existing but practically inaccessible information about the benefits and harms of prescription drugs. Much critical information that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has at the time of approval may fail to make its way into the drug label and relevant journal articles.

The most direct way that the FDA communicates the prescribing information that clinicians need is through the drug label. Labels, the package inserts that come with medications, are reprinted in the Physicians’ Desk Reference and excerpted in electronic references. To ensure that labels do not exaggerate benefits or play down harms, Congress might have required that the FDA or another disinterested party write them. But it did not. Drug labels are written by drug companies, then negotiated and approved by the FDA.

One example given in the NEJM article is the sleeping pill Lunesta:

Clinicians who are interested in (Lunesta’s) efficacy cannot find efficacy information in […]

2016-11-21T13:21:34-05:00October 22nd, 2009|health care policy|0 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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