Nurses’ media campaign warns against ‘unproven’ medical technology
A campaign launched by National Nurses United (NNU is calling the explosion of medical technology both “dangerous” and overly expensive, and a contributing factor to “the erosion of care standards.”
The union’s campaign features nationwide radio ads, video, social media, legislation, rallies and a call to the public to act. The theme of the campaign: “When it matters most, insist on a registered nurse.”
The union in particular criticizes the billions of dollars spent on medical technology, which they say do not live up to their promise of improving care.
Bedside computers that diagnose and dictate treatments based on generic population trends, and not on a patient’s health status or care needs, “increasingly supplant the professional assessment and judgment of experienced nurses and doctors exposing patients to misdiagnosis, mistreatment and life-threatening mistakes,” according to the union. It also criticizes EHR failures that leave clinicians without access to medical histories and orders, and telemedicine as depriving patients of individualized care necessary to heal.
The NNU also cited the $64.4 billion in profits in the hospital industry in 2012, as reported by the American Hospital Association. “Many of those hospitals are spending their profits and patients’ healthcare dollars on everything but quality patient care–on technology, Wall Street investments, buying up other hospitals, while cutting the staff of bedside registered nurses," according to NNU's announcement on the campaign.
“The American healthcare system already lags behind other industrialized nations in a wide array of essential health barometers from infant mortality to life expectancy. These changing trends in healthcare threaten to make it worse,” said NNU Co-President Jean Ross, RN, in a statement. “Behind every statistic is a patient, and their family, who are exposed to unnecessary suffering and risk as a result of the focus on profits rather than what is best for individual patient need.”