a.      Week 7 reflection:

1.      Meredith discusses in the video ways that technology can cause stress in school or practice. What ways were mentioned in the video that can stress you out and what are ways you can deal with stress?

2.   Can you describe a moment in your life that technology stressed you out?

Now it’s no secret that healthcare technology helps us provide the utmost quality patient care. There’s no denying that technology can be a major source of stress for the nurse and student. It’s incredibly frustrating when it stops working, there’s an upgrade to a system, or the systems don’t integrate with other programs. There may be a downtime, or your facility decides to implement a new program or add an advanced piece of equipment. There’s always a learning curve with new technology, and in general, people don’t care for change. There are few things more frustrating than having technology impede the care you provide. For instance, one day our electronic medication administration record wasn’t working properly. I took a pause, reached back to my fundamentals of nursing and checked all of my rights of medication administration. I was completely confident that I could safely administer a medication to my tiny patient but the only thing holding me back was the malfunctioning mar. I’m sure that each of you can relate to this situation. So how can we apply our mindfulness practice into situations such as these? It’s important to remember that we can choose whether a technological glitch will make us want to throw a piece of equipment across the room. And yes, we’ve all been tempted. Just one of the many great things about mindfulness practice is that it trains our brain to respond rather than to react. Here are some things that we can do in our technologically stressful situations. First, just take a pause. Take a moment to gather your thoughts. Take a couple of mindful breaths and move on. Next, as with any challenges as a nurse, recall that you have resources. Your down time protocols and IT department, your colleagues, and lastly you have your own critical thinking skills that would help you get through stressful situations. Lastly, I find it helpful to recall the reasons why technology as a whole does actually make my job easier and protects both my patients and myself.