Life: Nursing: The Heart of Technology

Here a just a few quick pictures we took at the nursing convention we went to in Harrisburg. The convention was titled: Nursing, The Heart of Technology. We heard great seminars and attended an NCLEX review course to prep us for boards. I don't truly know if this was helpful, because after we were finished, our brains were fried, and I felt dumber than ever! Anyway, think about this slogan, I thought it was interesting:

1. Nursing, The Heart of Technology
VS.
2. Technology, The Heart of Nursing

We saw videos and demonstations on robotic machines caring for patients, passing medications, and now even doing procedures in operating rooms! It was crazy, but it made me think: is this was we have finally come to? Where is the compassion and "therapeutic touch" of another human being?

But then I saw the up side: These robots can care for people with easily transmittable diseases. Think about it... If a nurse cares for a patient with small pox (this disease is easily spread through direct contact or by touching a contaminated surface or area), they are putting other patients at risk by then caring for them. Do you really know if there are no organisms of anything on their clothing, their shoes, their pen? Scary, isn't it?

The bad thing about technology is people and their resistance to change. One speaker talked about the older generation of nurses and their resistance to change. The speaker commented that she was one who resisted the change from the mercury thermometers to the tympanic or oral! How little a change, but how resistance and stuborn nurses were. Can you image using a mercury thermometer today? I don't even know if I would know how to use one!

Anyway, I found myself sitting there, being one of those "old nurses." I saw these robots, the "incision free surgeries," the thoughts for pacemaker changers via telephone waves, etc.... and I thought, 'never in my time.' But guess what, it's coming... and sooner than we know it.