A Significant Nursing Accomplishment

I really didn’t know it at the time. But now it’s thirty years after the fact and I am reminded of a significant nursing accomplishment that I am extremely proud of. This week we had a 1990 VHS tape transferred to digital format. On it were two interviews I gave about the bedside nursing documentation system we implemented at St. Joseph Hospital in Wisconsin. It was one of the first - if not the first - cutting edge technology of its kind at the time. I was the Director of Critical Care and was assigned to this project by my boss - who had been my mentor while in graduate school. If I had known then what I know now I’m not sure I would have felt prepared for this gigantic project. It does explain my love for iPads because the technology we used was touch screens developed by a company in Boulder, Colorado. We did productivity studies and cost justifications and extensive development and testing. There were several articles written and several press releases. I kept all of them. I posted the interviews on Facebook and am overwhelmed by the kind words of people that I worked with at the time, before and long afterwards. It’s such a compliment to be called an innovator or pioneer. I really never thought about it until I saw the interviews again. I can’t imagine how life would be like without this fabulous technology. I’m so thankful to have been a part of it.