Australian registered nurse medical device education: a comparison of life-sustaining and non-life-sustaining devices.

Registered nurses are primarily responsible for the use of medical devices in direct patient care. This cross-sectional survey compared how and what 139 registered nurses working in a variety of wards/units in a 1000-bed tertiary care hospital in South Australia initially learned about the life-sustaining and non-life-sustaining medical devices they use. Furthermore, the consequences of device use both for patients and staff were explored. How and what registered nurses initially learned about life-sustaining and non-life-sustaining devices were remarkably similar. Consequences of device use, which included increased or decreased quality of care, increased nurse stress and patient harm, were related, in part, to knowledgeable and proficient device use. Thus, device education for nurses is essential and warrants further exploration.