We have all seen unplanned electronic health record (EHR) downtime. Many nurses have used point-of-care glucose meters and heard the patient say, “I know it says my blood sugar is high, but it doesn’t feel high” only to retest and obtain a glucose reading within normal limits. And critical care nurses have seen precipitous changes in blood pressure readings from arterial lines only to discover that over- or underdamping was impacting accuracy. The reality is that technology is fallible.

Given the fallibility of technology, how reliant should nurses be on it? This is an important question for nurses to consider as technology becomes more entwined in patient care. Nurses are not the only health care workers who can overrely on technology, and even among nurses, there is wide variation in how much individuals trust technology. Inexperience, workload, fatigue, and other factors can influence the degree to which nurses rely on...

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