| 1. |
Of course nursing is not just a scientific pursuit, it is also an art.
(But surely if this is the case then what better way to capture nursing's artistic aspects?) |
| 2. |
If nurses (and other MDT members) have little time for keyboards, they are very unlikely to have time for 'fancy' graphical renditions of their work. |
| 3. |
They say that: multimedia makes accessible what is known. Data visualization on the other hand seeks to discover what is hidden. Davidson (1991) If that is the case then nursing should leave visualization to those with the data sets that justify its use: Epidemiologists: The spread of disease. Medics: Medical imaging in all its forms especially volumetric rendering. Geographers: Viewing topography; transport links; population flows; rainfall; crop distribution etc. Engineers: The stress loads in materials. Financial analysts: The performance and extrapolated trends of financial markets. Molecular biologists: The properties of new materials, molecular bonding, reactions. Varied applications: The use of virtual feedback - exploration Mars. Simulation of dangerous environments. What can nurses visualize virtually? (Our next pay award perhaps)? |
| 4. |
Why nursing again - we've been there - tried that - we need multidisciplinary tools, to support collaborative care. 'Object orientation', 'XML' and 'Artificial 'Intelligence', all sound grand, but what can they deliver? |
| 5. |
Future emphasis will be on portable devices with speech interfaces, so why bother with PCs even if they are as powerful as workstations circa two years ago? |
| 6. |
Do nurses think 'graphically' anyway? How do they visualize their work, their patient's problems? If collaborative care is needed, what will patients and relatives have to do? |
| 7. | After the amount of effort
still being exerted on coding and classification projects, shouldn't
we try to get the best out of them first? Consolidate before more
experiment.
|
| 8. | Finally, and most
importantly, where are the applications? Otherwise isn't this yet
another case of a solution searching for a problem?
|
| 9. | If visualization did (!) improve productivity, would that be a trigger for further rationalisation of experienced qualified nursing posts? Could the increase in visualization and automated reasoning tools ultimately adversely affect nursing and PAMs? |
| 10. | Nursing prides itself on
being inclusive and yet technology can exclude. For some people
words are worth more than pictures. In the UK the
Disabled Discrimination
Act (1998) gives web designers much to think about in terms of
making their web sites universally accessible (including this
site!). In the dash to embrace technology, communication must not be
squeezed out. Gelernter (1998) puts technology
in its place by declaring that:
'technology's single most important obligation is to get out of the way.' p.44 |
Davidson C (1991) Making Sense of the Information Age, Computer Weekly, Sept. 5. 16-17
Gelernter D (1998) The Aesthetics of Computing, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London.
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