A scoping review was recently undertaken to evaluate the skills that nurses need mastering to help them cope better with the exponential use of digital technologies in healthcare.

 

Within this scoping review, the researchers included literature published within a 10-year span, outlining the emerging skills and attitudes nurses are required to master.

 

This review highlighted the importance of communication skills in the context of remote consultations. It is critical that nurses have assumed the confidence to communicate and manage interpersonal relations with patients through remote tools.

 

To ensure communicative and technological skill are adopted, international organizations, including the International Medical Informatics Association and Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education, have proposed mHealth training frameworks. This will help to improve their preparedness for delivering digital care; they will be better prepared to deploy and implement mHealth interventions. It is even more important that nurses use an open and sensitive attitude during remote consultations where face-to-face is not possible.

 

Nurses must also receive the adequate digital training in order to be able to confidently use digital tools for various tasks. This includes using digital tools for patient enrolment, disease surveillance, and for using technological devices such as pulse oximeter or blood pressure monitors.

 

The review stressed how important it is for nurses to learn and take advantage of their remote chronic illness management skills. They canthen confidently deliver E health assistance to patients who have limited access to health services as a result of financial or geographic barriers.

 

Additionally, a quiet, disturbance-free environment was deemed crucial for supporting a smooth interaction during the delivery of telemedicine sessions.

 

Overall, the team outlined the skills and attitudes nurses must adopt to better facilitate the delivery of healthcare in the era of digitisation.

 

However, additional information is required to enhance the understanding of how these skills can be integrated into nurses’ formal curricular and training. Existing educational curriculums are based on conventional lectures that may not be the most suited for digital health training. Therefore, there needs to be some consideration of the educational curricular and future training initiatives to further improve the capacity and flexibility of nurses.

 

Source: JMIR Nursing

Image Credit: iStock


«« NHS Announces World-first National Genetic Testing Service


A Randomised Clinical Trial Tests the Benefits of Colonoscopies »»

References:

Isidori V (2022) Digital Technologies and the Role of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review Exploring Nurses’ Skills in the Digital Era and in the Light of the COVID-19 Pandemic

JMIR Nursing. 5(1):e37631




Latest Articles

mhealth, telemedicine, digital health, digital technologies A scoping review was recently undertaken to evaluate the skills that nurses need mastering to help them cope better with the exponential use of digital technologies in healthcare.