The evolution and development of medicine and hospital has truly undergone several phases between the Medieval Ages and now. It is also true that difficulties are still present and some hospitals struggle with the adoption of advanced medical practices and technologies. According to Dash (2014), hospitals face four major challenges. One is the substantial variation in implementation of best practices contained in the proactive model of hospital-based care. As it is, hospitals have not been able to minimise the number of hospital admissions or reduce the lengths of stay. Secondly, there is no universal standard for measuring care quality. The quality of care that patients receive and level of patient satisfaction, thus, vary with the providers. Thirdly, the cost of new technologies continue to create a gap between the small and larger hospitals and the last challenge is that hospitals struggle due to budgetary pressure. Still, technology plays undeniable role in the enhancement of patients’ safety and service quality. In fact, technology-based imaging equipment such as X-rays and CT scans, among others, have taken the accuracy of diagnosis and early detection of diseases to another level. Together, infection control measures, imaging technologies and instrumentation have improved patients’ safety and made the quality of care better.
Hospital Technologies
The ability of hospital technologies and guidelines for disease control to minimise nosocomial infections is a significant progress. In particular, new medical technologies such as the antiseptic-impregnated invasive equipment and related practices like ultrasound use to insert central venous catheter have played a significant role in reducing the rate of infections in intensive care units and hospital units (Mara, 2016). Up to this point, hospitals have the resources and guidelines for improving safety of patients through better care quality. It is now up to the practitioners to do their part. Mara (2016) explained that the area of hospital practice that faces the highest risk of non-compliance is the hand hygiene. The author stated that the inability to track compliance with hand hygiene guidelines result from the fact that patients use private rooms. Hand hygiene compliance is, thus, very poorly practised by health professionals. Other than the use of chlorhexidine hand rubs, hospitals will need advanced technologies like video camera monitoring (Mara, 2016) to get accurate feedback on health professional’s hand hygiene practices. A key observation here is that technological advances are fundamental to the evolution and development of hospitals but for them to work effectively, health care workers have to follow all the provided guidelines.
