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Direct-care RNs know that patients aren't just another product, and that
traditional nursing values of compassion and individualized patient care
honor the humanity of patients. It's these values that impel and inspire
RNs to advocate, both individually and collectively, for patients
• at the bedside,
• at the bargaining table, and
• in the political arena.
RNs advocate for patients everywhere hospitals and HIT companies try to use
their economic power to reduce patients to assembly-line widgets.
The question confronting RNs today is whether nursing will be transformed
by HIT into something altogether different. Gains in technical efficiency are
paid for with ruthless routinization and trivialization of nursing practice.
Patients who vary from a statistical norm are rendered invisible, and inhuman
conformity and unthinking obedience are exacted from RNs. RNs who care for
patients are in danger of being replaced by technicians who serve HIT.
Despite technological restructuring, nursing must continue to be defined in
terms of human qualities. Management's machines can't think or care. They
will never put the interests of patients above profit. That's what it has always
meant to be an RN, and what it must continue to mean in the brave new
high-tech hospital.
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