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

Study: Digital Technologies and the Role of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review Exploring Nurses’ Skills within the Digital Era and within the Light of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Image Credit: Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock

Background

Nursing roles have expanded digitally and evolved to enhance clinical practice quality and supply distant health assistance to individuals residing in places where healthcare facilities will not be accessible. In recent times, nurses have been required to finish a three-year university degree course in most nations to be authorized to offer care and assistance to patients and healthcare professionals, respectively.

In regards to the review

In the current review, researchers explored the roles of nurses and the abilities they require to adapt to digital health practices and improve the standard of healthcare services in light of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic.

English publications assessing the impact of telemedicine on nursing practices, published between 2011 and 2021, were retrieved from the Web of 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 didn’t meet the research purpose were excluded. Further, 26 papers with redundant topics and insufficient detail were excluded, and in consequence, 60 relevant studies were analyzed, and the review was accomplished 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 professionals and patients by digital means. Good leadership skills are essential for high-quality clinical practice since nurses are mainly involved in coordination and collaboration between healthcare professionals, caregivers, and patients.

Soft skills are required for effective communication, problem-solving, and adaptiveness to digital approaches and equipment. Communicative, technological, and transversal skills have to be added to nurse education curriculums to enhance eHealth literacy levels and make nurses more prepared, competent, and autonomous for the successful transformation of healthcare from the manual to the digital world.

Nurses must hone their distant chronic illness management skills to offer Ehealth support and assistance to patients living in distant locations and enable service decentralization from hospital settings to distant areas. Nurses need to boost their interpersonal skills to offer patient-centered telemedicine support with a sensitive and open for effective healthcare delivery in situations wherein face-to-face (FTF) sessions will not be possible and, subsequently, nonverbal indicators may go unnoticed.

Nurses are liable for patient enrollment, explaining services to patients and their caregivers, and managing data from digital health-monitoring devices (reminiscent of pulse oximeters and blood pressure monitors) used. Nurses must receive adequate technical training to make use of data management software and troubleshoot telemedicine-related issues.

International organizations reminiscent of the International Medical Informatics Association and Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education have proposed mobile health (mHealth) training frameworks to enhance the health skilled preparedness for facilitating digital care.

The mHealth frameworks aim to enhance digital communication skills, digital education, digital device, and software use skills, regulatory issues, compliance issues, deploying telemedicine services and products, and improving inter-professional health communications. The abilities have to be mastered by nurses to conduct distant medical consultations, health monitoring, and diagnosis and management of patients.

Incorporating telemedicine in nursing practice would improve information and technology (IT) use in health domains for improving guidance, support, and assistance to patients in distant locations by improving communication and interpersonal relationships between nurses and patients and remodeling nurses into efficient leaders to manage modern and high-quality care to patients.

Conclusions

Within the review based on literature published over 10 years, the team outlined the abilities and attitudes nurses must master within the digital health era, the emerging responsibilities of nurses in adopting telemedicine-based approaches, and the impact of the digital health revolution concerning nursing requirements.

The review findings showed that improving nurses’ readiness for adopting telehealth approaches needs an integrated method, combining technical equipment and device knowledge, distant management abilities, effective communication skills, soft skills, and interpersonal skills. Nurses must undergo digital training; nonetheless, effective and precise nurse training methods are yet to be developed.

Existing nurse educational curriculums are based on conventional lectures and directions which may be inadequate for correct digital health training, creating obstacles to incorporating digital technologies into routine clinical practice. As well as, quiet and disturbance-free environments are required to impart telemedicine education to nurses.

Journal reference:

• Isidori, V. et al. (2022) “Digital Technologies and the Role of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review Exploring Nurses’ Skills within the Digital Era and within the Light of the COVID-19 Pandemic”, JMIR Nursing, 5(1), p. e37631. doi: 10.2196/37631. https://nursing.jmir.org/2022/1/e37631/