Technology tips for older patients

For many acute care hospitals, the average age of their patients is 65 and older.

Our clinical team frequently gets asked how bedside nurses can help older patients adopt and use the technology in their room.

Here are some of the nurses’ tips:

Don’t underestimate older patients.

Especially post-pandemic, many seniors have become more tech savvy.

Some will be completely comfortable with technology, using it in their daily lives, so they have no problem also using it while they’re in the hospital.

But others—and this can be said for patients of any age—would rather not use technology if they have the choice.

So you really need to evaluate each patient person by person to see how receptive they are to things like an interactive TV in their room.

Make it easy.

With the SONIFI system, the TV automatically powers on with a welcome message, telling patients exactly what to do to get to the features.

This makes it really clear, and encourages patients to explore what’s there.

Most patient-facing TVs are run using a pillow speaker.

The first thing we do in training sessions for nurses is to point out that there is a guide button on that pillow speaker. So if you have a patient that’s not really comfortable with technology—they don’t really want to go into all the features you may have—they just have to hit the guide button and it’s going to take them to the channel guide on the TV.

This will look very familiar to them, working the same as what they’re probably using at home. So they can just jump right in and watch TV without having to navigate any of the interactive menus.

Bring the features to them.

With many of our customers, we also incorporate some of the interactive features like relaxation and streaming into the channel guide, making it so patients can select that content while looking at the regular TV programming guide.

On the patient side, it just looks like another channel, while on the backend it’s really getting those interactive features in front of people who may not have otherwise discovered it.

For the always important patient education, have a pop-up message prompting patients to watch information important to their health.

Even if all they use the TV for otherwise is watching live programming, patients need to know how to take care of themselves after discharge.

Education prompting is an effective visual reminder for them to watch the content.

The prompting message can take them right to their education assignments, making it simple for them to complete before leaving the hospital.