Nurses check our pulses , draw our blood , and deal for us when we ’re sick . But beyond all that , they also create equipment that saves lives and makes living more pleasant .
Over time , nurses have assumed more obligation for patient care . A 2011 article published in theNew England Journal of Medicinepointed outthat a number of study show that primary care services can be administer as safely and effectively by nanny practitioners as by doctors . And let both nurses and doc in a exercise increases patient gratification and boosts revenue .
Nurses ’ role also allow them to see aesculapian practices and procedures in a different agency , result in some revolutionary innovation . Without nurses , we would n’t have a phone number of tools regularly used today in both hospitals and homes .
1. THE CRASH CART
If your marrow stops , the defibrillator and resuscitation equipment in a crash cart could store your life . The wheeled set of knickers stocked with equipment , in the beginning call the crisis go-cart , was make up byregistered nanny Anita Dorrin 1968 , after years of watch precious time slip away as doctor and nurses procured the proper tool . She created the prototype in her cellar , organizing the cart with items require for the head in the top pants for easy admittance . Her clang cart is now used all over the man . Dorr did n’t stop creating there ; she also co - founded the Emergency Nurses Association .
2. COLOR-CODED IV LINES
IV lines were made of clear plastic until nurse Teri Barton - Salinas and her sister , Gail Barton - Hay , decided to patent their people of color - cypher line in 2003 to help shrink medical errors . Barton - Salinas got the idea when she was working as a labor speech nurse and had to use the lines in newborns . During an emergency brake , a nurse has only seconds to key the correct equipment , cook easy identification key . “ A medicine error is every nurse ’s nightmare , ” Barton - SalinastoldtheDaily Republicin 2010 . “ The affected role support , the family suffer , and the nurse suffers . ”
3. NEONATAL PHOTOTHERAPY
Sunlight help infant withjaundice , a condition that makes infants appear yellow due to gamy bilirubin spirit level in their blood . Many babies have high bilirubin levels , which occur when the body creates new red blood cellular phone . Usually the liver helps break haematoidin down , but many sister ’ livers do n’t work very efficiently at first .
In the fifties , Sister Jean Ward discovered that sunshine help her charges . Convinced that fresh air and warm sunlight help the baby she cared for as a nurse in the untimely unit at Rochford General Hospital in Essex , England , Ward would bring the babies outdoors . When she bestow one youngster inside one 24-hour interval , a doctor comment one section of skin that had been cover by the corner of a blanket was yellower than the rest of the baby ’s body . Now aesculapian professionals employ phototherapy to treat icteric babies .
4. BILI-BONNET
When those baby go through treatment for acerbity , nurses and doctors would have to forge glasses out of whatever materials they had available , sometimes using construction paper and cotton fiber balls to cover a premature baby ’s eyes while the shiny lights shined above . In the 1990s , Sharon Rogone , who had process as a nursemaid in hospital neonatal intensive care units in San Bernardino , California , created chalk especially designed for the teeny patients . She apply them in shoes with a fiddling bonnet and called the whole thing theBili - Bonnet . Rogone started her own caller , Small Beginnings , and has since created other inventions for premie .
5. BABY BOTTLES WITH DISPOSABLE LINERS
look on how breast feeding on bottles spent babies , Adda May Allen , who worked as a nurse at Columbia Hospital in Washington , D.C. in the 1940s , create a disposable liner that moms and hospital could confuse aside after just one exercise . While a baby sucked on a traditional bottle , a fond vacuum take form , turn back the teat . A plastic liner , however , allow the sides to close in as a baby drank her milk . " Say , this is a deuced sight more of import than some of the scientific papers,“a doctor toldaTimemagazine reporter soon after the liner polish off the market .
6. A FEEDING TUBE FOR PARALYZED VETERANS
Veterans paralyzed during WWII could n’t feed themselves untilBessie Blount Griffin , an African - American nanny , invented a subway in the forties they could use with their teeth . Patients could bite down on the tube and have a mouthful of liquefied food , giving them a bit of independence . Griffin was so near at reclamation that she gain the name “ Wonder Woman . ” Invention was n’t her only professing ; she later on went into forensic science and was the first African - American cleaning woman to work at Scotland Yard .
7. OSTOMY BAG
Elise Sorensen ’s little sister , Thora , had colon malignant neoplastic disease . After surgery , Thora faced life with an ostomy appliance for her wastefulness , which often smelled spoiled and leak with the equipment uncommitted . Elise , a visiting Danish nursemaid , create a answer for her sister in 1954 : a moldable pouch that she could cleave to her organic structure . The innovation has help those who ’ve hadostomy surgerylive normal lives ever since .
8. SANITARY PADS
On the battleground during WWI , doctors and nurses used a cloth called cellucotton to handle soldiers ’ wound . The product was five times as absorbent as cotton plant , which was in inadequate supplying . The field nurses also used it on the side as a healthful inkpad , and within a few years of the war ’s destruction , the musical theme was popularize in thedisposable commercial product , Kotex .
So duringNational Nurses Week , total up on May 6 , be sure to thank nurses for not only what they do , but what they ’ve done for the medical line of business , too .
