The present and future role of nurses in the new digital health era – News-Medical. Net

In a recent review published in JMIR Nursing , researchers reviewed nursing practices and additional skills required to be mastered by nurses within the electronic health revolution, with the use of digital technologies exponentially increasing during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Background

Nursing roles have expanded digitally plus evolved in order to improve clinical practice quality and provide remote health assistance to individuals residing in places where healthcare facilities may not be accessible. In recent times, nurses have been required to complete a three-year university degree course in most nations to be authorized in order to provide care and help patients and healthcare professionals, respectively.

About the review

In the present review, experts explored the particular roles of nurses and the skills they require to adapt to digital wellness practices plus improve the quality associated with healthcare services in light of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic.

English publications assessing the impact of telemedicine on medical practices, published between 2011 and 2021, were retrieved from the Web associated with Science, Google Scholar, and PubMed databases. Initially, 250 papers were identified, of which eight duplicate papers were discarded, and 156 papers with inaccessible free full text or which did not meet the research purpose had been excluded. Further, 26 papers with redundant topics plus insufficient detail were excluded, and as a result, 60 relevant studies were analyzed, as well as the review was completed by July 2021.

The findings broadly denoted five major areas of improvement to upscale digital health (eHealth) nursing practices: leadership skills, soft skills, nurse training, COVID-19 management remotely, and managing interpersonal relations with experts and patients by electronic means. Good leadership skills are essential for high-quality clinical practice since nurses are mainly involved in coordination and collaboration between health care professionals, caregivers, and individuals.

Soft abilities are required for effective communication, problem-solving, and adaptiveness to digital approaches and equipment. Communicative, technological, plus transversal abilities need to be added to nurse education curriculums to improve eHealth literacy levels and make healthcare professionals more prepared, competent, plus autonomous for the successful transformation of healthcare from the particular manual to the electronic world.

Nurses need in order to hone their remote chronic illness management skills to provide Ehealth support and assistance in order to patients living in remote locations and enable service decentralization from hospital settings to remote places. Nurses need to enhance their own interpersonal skills to provide patient-centered telemedicine support with a sensitive and open for efficient healthcare delivery in situations wherein face-to-face (FTF) sessions are not possible and, therefore , nonverbal indicators may go unnoticed.

Nurses are responsible for patient enrollment, explaining services in order to patients and their caregivers, plus managing data from digital health-monitoring devices (such as pulse oximeters and blood pressure monitors) used. Nurses must receive adequate technical training to use data administration software and troubleshoot telemedicine-related issues.

International organizations such as the International Medical Informatics Association and Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education have proposed mobile wellness (mHealth) coaching frameworks to improve the health professional preparedness for facilitating digital treatment.

The mHealth frameworks aim to enhance digital communication skills, electronic education, digital device, plus software make use of skills, regulatory issues, compliance issues, deploying telemedicine services and products, and improving inter-professional wellness communications. The skills need to be perfected by nurses to conduct remote medical consultations, health monitoring, and diagnosis plus management associated with patients.

Incorporating telemedicine in nursing exercise would improve information and technology (IT) use within health domains for enhancing guidance, assistance, and assistance to sufferers in remote control locations by improving conversation and interpersonal relationships between nurses plus patients and transforming healthcare professionals into efficient leaders to administer innovative plus high-quality care to patients.

Conclusions

In the review based on literature released over 10 years, the team outlined the skills and attitudes nursing staff need in order to master in the electronic health period, the emerging responsibilities of nurses within adopting telemedicine-based approaches, plus the effect of the particular digital wellness revolution concerning nursing requirements.

The evaluation findings showed that improving nurses’ readiness for adopting telehealth approaches needs an integrated method, combining technical equipment and device knowledge, remote management abilities, effective communication abilities, soft skills, and social skills. Nurses need to undergo digital training; however, effective plus precise health professional training methods are yet to become developed.

Existing nurse educational curriculums are usually based on conventional lectures and instructions that may be inadequate for proper digital health training, creating obstacles in order to incorporating electronic technologies into routine medical practice. In addition, quiet and disturbance-free environments are required to impart telemedicine education to nurses.