A Salute to Nurses

As we celebrate National Nurses Week from May 6th to 12th, let’s reflect on how we can empower the untold heroes of hospitals to deliver excellent patient care. On the frontlines every day, as Dr. William Osler, the founder of Johns Hopkins University aptly summarized it, “the trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician…” Despite the key role they play, more needs to be done to empower them to do the best work they can.

Nurse Educator and Author Sharon Hudacek hit the nail on the head, highlighting how “bound by paperwork, short on hands, sleep and energy… nurses are rarely short on caring.” The main touchpoint between patients, their loved ones and the medical system, too often nurses are compelled to step away from caring, supporting and helping patients to fill out forms and file reports.

In too many hospitals, nurses spend hours away from patients manually completing reports chasing down colleagues for information and tackling reams of past paperwork whenever information is needed. Outdated and antiquated systems like this do a disservice to the noble profession of nursing, to hospitals and ultimately to patients.

At Prista Corp., we know there’s a better way.

Nurses need a system that allows them to quickly and easily report on incidents, a system that allows seamless collaboration across the hospital, and most importantly, a system that allows everyone to use data to drive their decision-making. It’s this vision of an innovative, collaborative system that minimizes busy work that motivates our team of experienced clinical professionals when developing and optimizing ActionCue.

Ahead of her 204th birthday, we hope to continue embracing Florence Nightingale’s advice that we must “never consider ourselves finished, nurses. We must be learning all our lives.”

This article first appeared in the May 2024 edition of Marketplace, the monthly newsletter of TORCH Management Services, Inc.