New Trends in Medical- Surgical Nursing

Technological

1. Robots to assist nurses

Registered nurses (RNs) and nurse practitioners (NPs) are accustomed to emerging
technology impacting their environments and daily duties. While these advances in technology
and equipment bring many positive changes, some trends like robotics are feared because of the
possibility that they’ll take jobs away from nurses. However, the opportunities for nurses and
robots to work together, and the innate skills and characteristics of humans make RNs and NPs
irreplaceable.

 The healthcare robotics market is projected to grow to $2.8 billion in revenue by 2021.
That’s because the applications in healthcare seem endless.

 It’s a market that includes surgical, rehabilitation, and hospital robots. It can also include
elements like surgical robot training, exoskeletons, smart protheses and bionics, robotic
nurses, and robots that can assist with therapy, pills, logistics, telepresence, and cleaning.
There are also key technologies enabling healthcare robotics, such as gesture control,
machine vision, speech and voice recognition, and tactile sensors.

Benefits to implementing robots in

healthcare

 It can help a facility save

costs
 reduce facility waste
 improve patient care

Famous Nurse Robots

1. Robot Dinsow
Used by Thai and Japanese hospitals for patient care, Robot Dinsow monitors
elderly patients via video and sets up video chats with their relatives. It also alerts
caregivers of patient activity by phone. Additionally, it provides reminders for medication

1|Page
 and exercise, and exercises alongside the elderly. Finally, it provides entertainment by
offering games and karaoke.

2. Robot Paro
This seal-like robot is used in hospitals and extended-care facilities the world over.
It stimulates interaction between patients and caregivers. It also helps to relax patients by
imitating the voice of a baby harp seal,
Additionally, it’s adapts to patient behavior in part through its five sensor types:
light, audio, temperature, posture, and tactile. Overall, this robot helps to reduce patient
stress, improve their relaxation and motivation, and improve their socialization with
caregivers and their peers.

3. Robot Pepper

This humanoid robot works the reception area of two Belgian hospitals, greeting
people and guiding patients to their proper department. It can recognize 20 languages and
can identify gender, and can identify joy, sadness, anger, and surprise. It can also interpret
non-verbal cues like head tilts, frowns, smiles, and shifts in vocal tones.

Pepper also “sees” through two high-resolution cameras and a 3D camera. It’s also
equipped with shape recognition software that processes captured images. Twenty
engines and three multi-directional wheels allow the robot to move at a maximum speed
of 3 km/h, and its six laser sensors, two ultrasound transmitters, and three obstacle
detectors in its legs help it identify the distance of objects within a 3-meter range.

4. In Japan, a robot has been developed as an assistant to lift up and move patients from
beds to wheelchairs and reduce debilitating lifting injuries.
5. In Belgium another robot developed as an automated Triage Nurse, capable of taking a
patient's vitals, updating medical records and medical history.
6. In Duke University, a robot is designed to take vital signs for patients with infectious
disease.

Advantages of Using Robots in Nursing

- A wheelchair robot help paraplegic patients to move in and out of bed.

- Monitor patient’s vital signs.
- Remind the patients to take their pills.
- Remaining healthy muscle tissue for stroke patients by offering range of motion exercise.
- Offering automated chest compression (Frennert, S et al., 2013:Archiblad&Barnard,2018)
- Offering brain fitness exercise.
- Offering games, TV, Video, music, Facebook…..to reduce social isolation.
- Taking blood sample.
- Submit medical data into a centralized medical IT system.

2|Page
 - Help in toileting with dignity preservation.
- Perform a task without fatigue and with accuracy.

Today’s healthcare is undoubtedly an exciting, rapidly evolving industry. Technology companies

have noticed the needs in the healthcare setting and are continuing to develop and advance the
needs in the healthcare setting and are continuing to develop and advance technologies that will
benefit both the patient and the healthcare professional. As a result, students entering the field
will face challenges and opportunities in adopting and adapting new technologies.

2. Automatic Wireless Health Monitoring System

Nowadays, the health care sensors are playing an essential role in hospitals. The patient
monitoring system is one of the major developments because of its innovative technology. An
automatic wireless health monitoring system is used to measure patient’s body temperature and
heartbeat by using embedded technology. The proposed system uses both the sensors
like heartbeat sensor and temperature sensor. These sensors mainly involves in monitoring the
condition of the patient.

Applications & Advantages of the Health Monitoring System

The applications of the automatic wireless health monitoring system mainly include the following.

 The wireless health monitoring system is used to transfer the data from the TX
section to RX section wirelessly.
 The proposed system mainly focuses on the situation where the doctors and
patients are at the distant location and it is very important to give the entire details
about the heartbeat and the temperature of the patient to the doctor.
 Besides this if made particular changes in this project, it can also be applicable for
acknowledging the students with the fastest mode of information about certain
notices.
The advantages of the automatic wireless health
monitoring system mainly include the following.

 Associating the gap between the

patients and the doctor
 Best to be used in rural areas for
multipurpose. So that all the
conditions are simply measured
 Operation of this device is very
simple
 It gives a good performance when
we compare with compact sensor.

3|Page
 Furthermore, this project can be enhanced by using different parameters such as retinal
size, BP, weight and age can be included to control the parameters in the future.

3. eHealth System – RxBox Device

RxBox Device or simply known as “RxBox” is a

telemedicine device capable of capturing medical
signals through built-in medical sensors, storing data
in an electronic medical record (Community Health
Information Tracking System – CHITS), and
transmitting health information via internet.

It is one of the DOST’s efforts of “Smarter

Philippines” and the ICT’s innovation designed to
support the DOH’s call for Kalusugang Pangkalahatan
or Universal Health Care. This is funded by the DOST’s Philippine Council on Health Research
and Development (PCHRD) and developed by researchers at the Electrical and Electronics
Engineering Institute, and the U.P. National Institute of Physics from the University of the
Philippines in Diliman, and the National Telehealtg Center. The RxBox can reduce the overall
cost of healthcare by enabling health workers to diagnose, monitor and treat patients within the
rural health facility.

RxBox can do the following medical services:

1. Blood pressure monitor – measures the patient’s blood pressure to detect cardiovascular
(heart and blood vessels) problems especially hypertension, a disease which can also
worsen other chronic lifestyle disease conditions.
2. Pulse oximeter – measures the level of oxygen in the patient’s blood and can help detect
lung and cardiovascular problems.
3. Electrocardiogram (ECG) – monitors the heart’s movement to pump blood throughout the
body, helpful for those with acute and chronic heart problems, including pregnant mothers
with cardiovascular problems.
4. Fetal heart monitor – measures the baby’s heart rate while in the womb, helping detect
fetal distress at critical times of the pregnancy and delivery.
5. Maternal tocometer – measures the strength of a mother’s uterine contractions during
labor and delivery, enabling early detection of distress to the mother and/or the baby.
6. Temperature sensor –
measures a patient’s
body temperature. It can
help detect fever, a
common medical sign of
infection and other
disease conditions

B. Diagnostic Modalities

4|Page
 1. Non-invasive Glucose Monitoring

Glucose monitoring devices represent an exciting frontier in diabetes research, holding

the potential to improve the lives of over 400 million people worldwide this number is expected to
rise by approximately 55% within the next 25 years.(International Diabetes Federation ,2015).

Advantages of Non-invasive Glucose Monitoring

- It displays blood sugar level every few minutes.

- Can trigger alarm if the blood sugar level is above or below a normal level.

- Blood glucose results can be download to computer or smart phone, allowing nurse and
patients to see blood sugar trends over time.

- Reduce the long-term complications.

- Provide long-term valuable and enables immediate feedback regarding glycemic control
that reveals hypo- or hyperglycemia.

New possible horizons is essential for wearable glucose monitoring sensor applications and
perspectives in terms of big data analytics for personalized and proactive care.

2. Cancer genetics and genomics

Cancer genetics and genomics are important aspects in nursing fields. So nurses should
have in-depth genetic knowledge and skills in oncology settings (Umberger et al.,2013).

Clinical application of cancer genetics and genomics requires extensive educational

preparation, working in multidisciplinary team, identify patient at risk through assessing family
history, facilitating genetic testing and counseling services.(Boucher, Habin, and Underhill,2018).

Cancer genetics and genomics are rapidly evolving, with new discoveries emerging in
genetic mutations, variants, genomic sequencing, risk-reduction methods, and targeted therapies.
To educate patients and families, state-of-the-art care requires nurses to understand terminology,
scientific and technological advances, and pharmacogenomics.

Genetics is the study of individual genes and the ways in which their expression or
dysfunction impacts the development of relatively rare single-gene disorders. Many mistakenly
believe that genetics and genomics are interchangeable and that genetics explains how all
disease, including cancer, develops.

Genomics is an exploding area of interest in oncology care and includes the study of all
genes in the human genome together, including their interactions with each other and the
environment, as well as the influence of psychosocial and cultural factors on the development of
disease, such as cancer.

5|Page
 Clinical application of cancer genetics and genomics involves working in interdisciplinary
teams to properly identify patient risk through assessing family history, facilitating genetic testing
and counseling services, applying risk-reduction methods, and administering and monitoring
targeted therapies. All nurses need to be familiar with the document Essentials of Genetic and
Genomic Nursing.

C. Nursing Management

1. Nursing precision

2. Ayurvedic practices part of Holistic Care

6|Page