I am not a nurse, but I am a pharmacist who works in a hospital. I agree with what everyone is saying about the computer work now. Unfortunately, in our hospital those who I consider among the "best" nurses have got out of direct patient care and into management or quality assurance, etc. It's unfortunate for the patients but they had to do it for their own sanity. It's the same in our pharmacy, what's rewarded on performance appraisals is adherence to certain functions that often don't measure the quality of patient care. So the people who go out of their way to actually help a patient may get a lesser appraisal than someone who knows how to churn numbers. I worry about patients as more and more of the workers who put patient care first burn out and take non-patient contact jobs or retire because they can't look at how things are changing on a daily basis. I had a situation last week where what would have been a dangerous drug was prescribed for a patient based on just looking at notes. When I asked the practitioner and my fellow pharmacist what the patient said, they looked at me like I had two heads. Neither had spoken to the patient. It could have been a very serious mistake to prescribe what they did given what the patient had been on and yet it appears no one cares. That is why I am not sleeping at night and why I worry about the future of health care. All I can say is exercise, eat right and stay as healthy as you can so you don't to rely on health care.
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