|
For Immediate Release
Mercy Gives Voice to Patients Unable to Speak
Oklahoma City — To communicate or not to communicate is the dilemma for
many patients in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Oftentimes, patients try
to scribble something down on a pad of paper to tell their doctors,
nurses or family members that they are experiencing more pain, need to
go to the bathroom or are feeling dizzy.
But now with an electronic communicator pad at Mercy, patients who
can’t talk for various medical reasons can simply push a button to
communicate everything from being hungry to being too cold, needing a
family member to finding their glasses, and figuring out what day it is
to turning off the television. And for anything else the patient needs
to say, they press an alphabet key to spell out sentences on a screen.
“We have patients every day who are very ill and they struggle to
communicate something as simple as the fact that they need to go to the
bathroom,” said Sandie Rowe, RN, BSN, CCRN, nurse manager for Mercy’s
ICU. “They can’t talk because they have a breathing tube down their
throat or they’ve had a stroke. It can be very frustrating for patients
who can’t speak to try and communicate.”
Thanks to a Delaware nurse who invented the pad and AstraZeneca, a
drug company distributing the new technology, Mercy now has 36 pads, one
for every ICU room, as well as bilingual pads for Spanish-speaking
patients. Each pad has about 30 buttons dedicated to single issues, such
as “what time is it?” and “I need my family,” gleaned from research of
the most frequent patient concerns.
“Patients love the pads because they can simply push a few buttons to
get across anything they need to say,” said Rowe. “It gives them a voice
they didn’t have before. They can even punch buttons to communicate
their level of pain. It has been a great tool for patients at Mercy.”
Press release dated: May 22, 2007
|
