Nursing

Web site spotlight: Nurses use iTouch and iPhones to communicate and stay connected

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, November 20, 2009

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Sarasota (FL) Memorial Healthcare System plans to bring peace and quiet, along with improved healthcare, to its hospital by supplying Apple's iTouch to all its nurses.

Sarasota Memorial was approached by Voalte, a startup developing point-of-care communications company, to be part of a piloting program. Voalte uses mobile technology, specifically applications from Apple, to send pages and alerts. During the 60-day pilot program that started in June, Sarasota Memorial handed out 25 iPod Touches to nurses on one specific floor with the goal of reducing the amount of noise and inefficiency involved in paging nurses.

At any given time in Sarasota Memorial, one can hear an overhead page every three minutes, and when a patient is in pain and trying to recover, that can be an issue. However, during the pilot program, the one floor that had nurses using the iPod Touches reduced the number of pages in eight hours from 172 to 38, which pleased patients who appreciated the new quiet. Overall, the iPod Touches were receiving 4,000 messages a day.

Editor’s note: To read the rest of this article, visit “Nurses use iTouch and iPhone to Communicate and Stay Connected” found in the Reading Room at www.StrategiesForNurseManagers.com. Get a free trial membership that will give you 30 days to test drive all the exciting features on the Web site.



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