In Passage II, 'Track your personnel and your equipment” What does nurse Terranova dislike this slogan?
Directions: Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the twin passage.
Passage – I
When a patient calls for help at Seton Medical Center, Hi, Mr. Rogers, can I help you? (says a nurse), it's never a problem finding the nurse. You want him to come in? OK, OK thanks. [It’s] because they all wear locator badges [that are] part of a wireless system that tracks their movements on the floor. You can even tell when they are walking down the hallway? asks James Hattori. Yes, you can. This system made by Hill-Rom uses infrared signals to detect when nurses enter a room to answer a call. Staff can talk and listen through a wall unit to nurses or even to patients in other rooms. The time we were spending hunting staff down trying to find them and locate them we can put that to much better use, says a staff member from Seton. Hill-Rom says it has systems installed in more than 850 U.S. hospitals. Some nurses worry that the devices will be used to listen in on conversations and scrutinize their movements. I'm not wearing mine. I will still meet my patients’ needs but I will not wear this badge. Annette Bearden is among dozens of nurses at Eden Medical Center who staged an active protest two months ago saying the system smacks of Big Brotherism. They hid their badges though they were later recovered. You know it makes me not feel like a professional. It makes me feel like someone has to watch me to make sure I am doing my job. The biggest reason we installed this technology is because our old call system is about 25 years old, says a hospital manager. For hospitals this is a case of technology allowing, perhaps forcing people to better utilize their time. Officials at Eden don't deny they monitor how long it takes nurses to respond to calls but say their main concern is patient care. I think it is one tool that we can use in measuring performance overall performance but by itself it is not a valid disciplinary tool, says an Eden spokesperson. Eden is expanding its system with hopes the nurse will eventually accept the new technology, but back at Seton where it's been in place for about two years, there are no qualms. Once the staff actually find out how advantageous it can be for them and the patients, well, actually it became very popular. Here Big Brother may be watching, but they say he is also helping out. The Hill-Rom devices look like a mini computer mouse. Some hospitals are putting them in nurses’ lounges and kitchens. In Castro Valley, California, the Eden Medical Center spent almost three hundred thousand dollars to install the Hill-Rom systems on two floors. Eden hopes to get more of the systems for other floors.
Passage - II
Christina Terranova, RN, LNC, a New York State Nurses Association nurse representative and member, was interviewed by ABC News and The New York Times on the issue of nurse tracking. Simply put, she finds the practice offensive to nurses and the profession, harmful to patient care and potentially harmful to nurses' health. Here we are in a national battle to preserve our profession, and the companies who make these systems are advertising them with slogans like 'Track your personnel and your equipment,' Terranova said. The day registered nurses are lumped in with IVAC pumps, it's a sad day. She believes the use of tracking systems will continue to grow, because the health care industry is more into time management and profit margins than its original mission of caring for the ill. Joy Roberts, MSN, RN, and another nurse faculty member were appalled when they learned that two of their students were forced to wear locator badges where they work. Roberts teaches a graduate course called Policy Organization and Finance in Health Care at the University of Missouri Ð Kansas City. Some nurses might not care about it as an issue, but if one stops to think about it, wearing these devices is like home detention for prisoners, Roberts said. It devalues nurses because it implies that they are not doing their work. Physicians would never tolerate it. She and her colleague now are investigating which other facilities are using tracking devices in their state. Said the Missouri Nurses Association member, Our goal is to find a way to put a stop to it. Florida Nurses Association member Robyn Cheung, MSN, RN, couldn't feel more differently about the technology. A staff nurse on a telemetry unit, Cheung likes the tracking system at her facility for many of the same reasons expressed earlier by other nurses. She said she's never heard of any cases in which the system was used against nurses or that management wants nurses out of patient rooms within a certain amount of time. Her facility's system currently generates two reports. One is the staff activity report, which shows where nursing staff were throughout their 12-hours shifts. The other is the call report, which shows when a patient put on the call light, and when it was answered. (The call light goes off automatically when staff walk into a patient's room.) This can be another way to demonstrate where nurses spend their time, and if they are pulled in too many directions, correlate it to adverse patient outcomes, Cheung said. But Terranova remains firm in her opposition. Beyond the time management and professionalism issues, Terranova is concerned about the health risks nurses face when exposed to low-level infrared pulses, which are emitted from the tracking badges, and electromagnetic fields, which surround the sensors. There's been very little research done on long-term exposure to low-dose infrared, Terranova said. It wasn't too long ago that we were mixing chemo with our hands. I see us again being placed in this guinea pig situation. We really have to look at this, she continued. Even if it makes it easier to find (the nurse with) the keys -- at what price?