Is caring in nursing practice still present in a highly technological milieu?
The healthcare landscape has drastically changed from the use of the trained senses of the nurse to a device-mediated system such that the nurse is challenged to be technologically adept in a caring world of practice.
While these technological advances have facilitated health care, it provokes a note of concern. By using the very technology that has facilitated nursing care, are we substituting technological care, in the form of monitoring and surveillance mechanisms, for person-to- person care?
A symbiotic relationship should exist between technology and caring. Caring professionals need to balance state-of-the-art technology with integrated and comprehensive care and harmonize the demands of subjectivity with objective signs (Almerud, et al., 2007).
To provide quality health services to patients, technology should meet the five “right” goals: Right Information at the Right Time to the Right Person in the Right Format and the Right Medium (as cited by Hung, et al., 2013).
Locsin (2001) stated that the “technically savvy nurse practices with a skillfulness and expertise often grounded in the understanding that procedural adeptness signifies excellence in nursing practice”.
For the expert nurse, it is difficult to separate the elements of his/her practice, at which time nursing and the technology can become seamlessly intertwined, using skill, intuition, and a wealth of past experiences. In essence, the practice of the expert modern nurse has become the amalgamation of nursing skill and technical competence, both of equally high priority (Musk, 2004).
In a study among students assigned in critical care, it was discovered that it was only when nurses developed competence with technology that they could focus on the principles of nursing.
Patient centered care requires human intelligence to ‘gather, integrate, and make sense of information about the patient. Machines could never replace human skills that involve the complex interaction of senses, knowledge experience, and intuition (Ashworth, 1990).
Furthermore, the art of nursing remains superior to the technology available, for technology becomes an extension of the nurses’ hands, eyes, ears, and other senses, rather than a replacement for these.
In many instances the experienced nurse will perceive changes in the patient’s condition long before the monitors and other equipment have registered a variation.
Experienced nurses who have developed technical competence have more opportunities to get to know the patient while performing nursing functions in a high-technology environment. Nurses can never be replaced by machines and gadgets, hence the interplay of caring and technology in any healthcare setting.
Since technology and caring are inextricably bound in nursing, it is suggested that nurses should become more actively involved in the design and outcomes of healthcare technology, since they are in an ideal position to create the coalescence of technology and humanism (as cited by Musk 2004).
Technology generally focuses on measureable, visible and programmed tasks and responses while nurses deal with the holistic aspect of the person.
Well- designed technologies allow nurses to focus on caring functions thereby promoting the health and well-being of patients.
Mark Lloyd Arnaiz
Calindagan, Dumaguete City
