In response to AnnaBanana's post from June 23 2009 05:59PM
AnnaBanana said…
Have you ever had to spend the night in a hospital hooked up to fancy equipment which BEEPED all the time. Trust me, it can be very annoying, especially at night when you are trying to sleep. Then, you just get to sleep and someone wakes you up to take your blood pressure! I appreciate their concern but I also cheer for same-day surgery!
I think the people who make IV pumps and scanners in hospital settings must have NEVER been a patient themselves. I used to work 12 hour nights as a nurse. My unit is oncology with intermediate and critical care patients as well as bone marrow transplant patients who might be there for weeks, so we give a LOT of medications.
Now we have to scan each medication, and it sounds like the scanner at the grocery store. Even though I work days now, sometimes my patient will actually fall asleep. I used to be able to tell them what medications I would be hanging in the next hour or two and sneak in and quietly start medications while the patient slept. Now, it's BEEP to identify the computer, another BEEP for the medication bar code and another BEEP for the armband. And that's if they all pick up the first time.
I feel for any patient who is actually trying to rest in the hospital these days. I understand the safety reasons for all of the computerized charting, but it can be rather frustrating for the nurse and patient.
We also have heart monitors on our unit, and when people use cell phones or anything else that might use similar waveforms (like a Furbie!), it can affect the reading on the heart monitors. That can be really frustrating because we often do not know that someone is using a cell phone since we have signs posted everywhere asking people to turn them off.
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