New technologies have impacted all sectors, including nursing in the healthcare industry. The article “Impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on Nursing Care: Results of an Overview of Systematic Reviews” by Rouleau et al. (2017) evaluates various indicators and dimensions of nursing care that ICTs can influence. The authors acknowledge that ICTs are increasingly becoming an instrumental incentive for quality health care delivery among healthcare providers. Notably, technologies change the way nurses execute various responsibilities in healthcare facilities, including planning, care delivery, documentation, as well as a review of clinical care. Rouleau et al. (2017) identified for main domains of ICTs for health or eHealth, including computerized decision support systems (CDSSs), communication, information, and management systems.
The authors achieved their objective by reviewing different research projects related to the technology’s effect on nursing care. The article utilizes the Nursing Care Performance Framework (NCPF), a model which shows how the interaction of nursing services and resources influences patient condition. Twenty-two articles met the eligibility criteria of the study and were published between 2002 and 2015 (Rouleau et al., 2017). Five steps, including search strategy, selection of reviews, extraction, and management of data, methodological quality assessment of eligible articles, and data synthesis, were involved in processing the results of the study.
The study’s findings identify nineteen indicators of nursing care that are influenced by technology, including documentation time, nurse-patient relationship, nurse autonomy, time management, nurses’ skills and competence, information quality and access, and others. Mohmmed et al. (2017) and Krick et al. (2019) supported the findings by indicating that the use of technologies such as Electronic Health Records (EHR) has a positive influence on nursing. Indeed, technology improves planning, documentation, and other functions of nursing, enhancing patient outcomes. Rouleau et al. (2017) conclude that the planning and implementation of new ICTs in health care facilities should consider all the nursing indicators influenced by technology.
References
Krick, T., Huter, K., Domhoff, D., Schmidt, A., Rothgang, H., & Wolf-Ostermann, K. (2019). Digital technology and nursing care: A scoping review on acceptance, effectiveness and efficiency studies of informal and formal care technologies. BMC Health Services Research, 19(1), 400. Web.
Mohmmed, R. G. A., Mohammed, H. M, & El-sol, A. E. H. (2017). New technology in nursing education and practice. IOSR Journal of Nursing and Health Science, 6(6), 29−38. Web.
Rouleau, G., Gagnon, M.-P., Côté, J., Payne-Gagnon, J., Hudson, E., & Dubois, C.-A. (2017). Impact of information and communication technologies on nursing care: Results of an overview of systematic reviews. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 19(4), e122. Web.