Medical Applications: Nursing Implications
- Education and Practice- Nanotechnology may be introduced to nursing curricula in order to educate nurses about nano products entering the healthcare field. Nurses should be familiar with drug delivery systems, drug metabolism and nursing skills necessary to assess patients receiving treatment with nano-enabled products. Nurses also should be prepared to educate patients about the nano-enable diagnostics and treatments.
- Advocacy - Nurses are in a prime position to influence and advocate for the safe and ethical use of Nanotechnology in patient care.
- Ethics -Informed consent, Right to know, Precautionary principle, Intellectual property, authorship, and publication rights must be taken into consideration by nurses for the nanotechnology development and implementation in healthcare.
- Informatics - Nurses can be involved through nursing informatics to influence enhanced system design to support data and information from nanomaterials used in healthcare.
- Research- Nurses can play a key role in research, in particular as it relates to the impact of nanotechnology in nursing knowledge and practice.