FOR CNA/NNOC
Part III
Routinizing Patient Care
Section 1:
overview
Nursing is especially hard to routinize because every patient is different, but
hospitals are working on it. In fact, they want to routinize
• the nursing process,
• RNs, and even
• patients.
I n how
ways imany
a patie s
N OT liknt
a mach e
ine?
From management's point of view, machines make better RNs than people do.
Machines usually do things in exactly the way management wants them done,
and they don't advocate for patients when management wants to cut corners
on patient care. Machines would make better patients too. Because they're
simpler than people, they could be cared for by other machines. If only both
RNs and patients could be replaced by machines, managers would finally be
satisfied.
Of course, patients can't be replaced by machines, so management wants to do
the next best thing: treat them like machines. An information technology is
itself just a complex machine made up of hardware and software. It can't think.
It can't recognize differences among patients that weren't programmed into it
beforehand. It can only treat patients like machines, as if they always behaved
as expected.
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