96 Chapter 4 Introduction Nurses perform numerous tasks around the patient's bed, which occupies a central position in hospital rooms. Since 1990, technological advances have transformed traditional beds into smart medical beds with features such as Wi-Fi connectivity, integrated weighing scales, and a possible transformation to a chair position [1]. These innovations can significantly impact and improve nurses’ workflows, for example, enabling to weigh bedridden patients directly in bed. Which may impact the time a nurse used to spent to find someone for help in getting the patient out of bed. Additionally, this potentially alleviates nurses’ workload – a critical benefit given the growing shortage of nursing staff and the increasing healthcare demands of an aging population [2]. Additionally, these smart functions can enhance the quality of care by reducing risks, such as preventing falls [3]. The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the importance of these functions. For instance remote monitoring capabilities, have become essential for managing fall-risk patients without physical contact, helping to prevent adverse events while minimizing cross-infection risks between nurses and patients with highly infectious diseases [4]. Smart functions may also benefit patients by facilitating early mobilization while remaining in bed. Although smart medical beds have been available since the 1990s, most existing studies on smart beds fail to address their usability and practical implementation in practice. This is an important gap, given the evidence that healthcare professionals do not automatically adopt technological innovations as intended [5]. Numerous studies have identified barriers to implement innovative technologies in nursing, including concerns about performance expectancy (e.g., fear of malfunctioning), and the anticipated or actual effort required to use these innovations [6, 7]. Additionally, social influence and other conditions, such as ergonomic considerations, have also been identified as barriers to adoption [8, 9]. Initially, we planned to investigate the impact of these smart functions on various patient outcomes and the physical burden on nurses. However, during the planning phase, the researchers (TK, DS) who were working as nurses at that time, encountered challenges in using the smart functions themselves. Discussions with colleagues revealed that these challenges were widespread. Consequently, assessing the impact on clinical outcomes was deemed premature. First, it was necessary to explore the determinants influencing the actual use of these technical improvements in medical beds. To address this, we prepared a comprehensive evaluation guided by the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) process evaluation framework [10, 11]. Process evaluations are essential for understanding how complex interventions operate in practice and can provide valuable evidence to inform policy and practice [10].
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw