Comprehensive patient monitoring in a neurosurgical intensive care unit.

As technology improves, medical care becomes more complex, and nurses must continue to look for new and better ways to provide optimal patient care. The comprehensive monitoring system described here provides a timely, organized, and flexible system to handle patient data. This information can be used in a variety of ways to benefit all levels of health care providers. The nurse is able to enter all data from the bedside and recall any of that data from the same station. The computer can serve useful functions for the nurse which the paper form cannot. It provides greater flexibility in reviewing the data than a paper form. The system works for the nurse to allow more time and attention to be spent on the patients and less on the paperwork. It is also a powerful tool for medical research. All of these contribute to the goal of providing, and continually improving, the highest quality care to the patient.