Modern Equipments have become the LIfeline of Hospitals

A

andrewdecosta

Registered Member
In the technological characteristics of the contemporary medical environment, medical equipment have reached a unique position. They have become the lifeline of today's hospitals because they can not function effectively without the modernization of medical equipment. Surviving in the hospital depends not only on the level of care, but also the maintenance of Medical equipment.

What are your opinions on this?
 
I disagree. I know of a highly experienced doctor who was sent to the boxing day tsnunamie. He couldn't even deliver high flow O2 to pneumonia patients let alone continuase positive pressure ventilation (CPAP). They had to make do and they did. The same goes for the Queensland floods, the NZ earthquake and the Japanese disaster
 
I agree that in the hospital setting many things have become very technical and therefore good technicians are at a premium today to keep that equipment up and running.
 
Information technology is also revolutionizing medical care. If a physician encounters a patient with rare symptoms, he can search for them on the internet and find other cases with diagnosis and treatment. IT also makes it possible for doctors to examine patients in small, distant communities where it would not be economically feasible to establish a practice.
 
I'm studying medicine now, and I couldn't imagine it without online journals, databases, and Wikipedia (oh, yes...)

We're taught that most of good patient care is about taking a good history (ie listen to the patient's story, hear what they're saying, and ask the right questions) and common sense thinking. "Don't let the tests/technology do your thinking for you" is something I hear a lot.

The technology can sometimes be a trap, just as any tool can be a trap (to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail). It can be tempting for a doctor to order some test or treatment because it's a usual thing to do, without a reason specific to the particular patient situation.

I don't have a lot of hospital experience, but it seems that most of the technology is in the ICU and operating theatres, and most of the devices I've seen don't do anything that can't be done manually.

In the operating theatres I spent a week in last year, for example, the anesthetist has a machine that can control ventilation and gas delivery in wonderful ways, monitor vital signs, and maintain a record of all anaesthetic events including what drugs were administered when. But, beside the machine are the simple low-tech tools that will also get the job done. Masks, bags, airways, pens and paper, oxygen. And these simple tools are used regularly - there's nothing that isn't used every day.

There are wonderful technologies that can't be replaced by low-tech methods, but as far as I know (in my limited experience) these are for special cases - they aren't essential to keep the hospital running. They make patient outcomes better than they would be without them, and if they broke, it wouldn't make outcomes any worse.

Record keeping is an interesting area, which (in the hospitals I've been in) is pretty much all paper based for day to day clinical care. That has is drawbacks, which may or may not be worse than the drawbacks of a mostly electronic system.
 
Yes the saying we get is "Don't treat the monitor". Everything is about the ECG or the sats probe but what dose that do to your patient. Especially the sats, if the pt is short of breath are you really going to withhold oxygen simply because the probe tells you he is saturating at 99%???
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top