It is widely accepted that nurses are as important as doctors in patient treatment. There exist numerous different theories and experiments regarding nursing and healthcare, which suggest implementing new ways in medical care. However, some of them are controversial or have limited application. Despite this fact, clinicians attempt to continuously innovate their practice to offer valuable solutions that make the treatment process better and easier. This essay discusses an example of implementing online communication for improving relations between patients and healthcare providers.
The Role of Nursing
Nurses are among the most significant contributors to human life as they play a crucial role in healthcare and overall treatment. Such specialists outnumber physicians, spending more time with patients and developing meaningful connections with them as an outcome. Clinicians earn trust from their patients by counseling on health, protecting their clients’ health from possible deterioration, and alleviating pain and suffering. However, this communication is often limited to the hospital setting.
Nurses also assume the role of educators, providing patients with information about disease symptoms, prevention, and treatment. This duty is especially vital for community nurses and policy advocates who aim to raise the awareness of their clients. It is clear that communication is essential to nursing, and healthcare providers require stable and reliable channels to talk to patients and ensure their adherence to treatment or prevention practices. Moreover, nursing gives patients both psychological and physical support, which are the keystones of an effective healthcare system.
Consequently, new ways of delivering knowledge and conversing with clients need to be developed and implemented. These strategies need to align with healthcare professionals’ current models of care, focused on holistic approaches (Fawcett, 2017). One of the models that nurses apply in their work Jean Watson’s Human Caring Theory that encourages specialists to think about the mind, soul, heart, and body of their patients (Fawcett, 2017). To address such concerns and integrate them into patient-provider communication, new methods can be used.
New Nursing Concepts
Nowadays, nurses have a wide range of concepts and approaches, which they can implement in their practice. Despite such a great choice, many of these concepts are developed to suit only specific conditions, which lowers their applicability. For example, various challenges during the communication between nurses and patients can arise in hospitals that do implement new ways of interacting with clients. Such problems are not always reliant on a lack of care or specialists’ neglect, however. Some professionals may not connect with their patients quickly, or clients can be hesitant about using traditional ways of communication. That is why some clinics implement new technologies to provide people with better services.
Applications for Communication
They discussed local hospitals attempted to follow a modern approach to nursing and introduced a new system for online communication with patients via messengers. The facilities’ personnel were connected to a system that connected clients and providers and allowed them to exchange emails in one network. Overall, the installation was going smoothly, but many mistakes occurred during the registration and account creation process, with major setbacks happening in the first two weeks.
Other concerns were identified by patients and health care providers as well. For example, nurses reported that older patients were confused or hesitant to utilize the system. Some clients misused the chats, trying to have a casual conversation with their care provider or disrupting the staff’s working process with repeated calls to the front desk after sending an email.
In later stages, the responsible team decided to review their approach to this program. Together with the involved clinicians, they decided to change their strategy and use a developed application as the basis for change. In cooperation with analysts, programmers, and nurses, they chose an innovative online platform, which allowed people to have easy access to healthcare services, useful information, and consultations. They selected Well Health, an application that integrates instant messaging, calls, chats, email, and consultation confirmation services (Well Health, n.d.). The researchers agreed that this app could be the industry’s changemaker, as well as a great study example for other hospitals.
Concerns and Objectives
Involved programmers and analysts note that there are some downsides to the new platform. Well, Health’s interface still confuses older patients and some nurses. The implementation also requires significant spending for personnel training. In addition, there exists a threat that both clients and workers will not view the platform as a viable alternative to traditional communication, so they may withhold information from each other or avoid using the new app. To achieve great results, all participants of this research should be equally engaged and interested in it, because effective and sustained implementation requires a commitment individually and collectively (Giddens, Caputi, &Rodgers, 2015). It is also essential to engage more participants in this project to collect more data.
Conclusion
Many scientists claim that modern technology is the main driver of progress. It is commonly agreed today that almost every aspect of life is influenced by computers since they simplify most procedures. Moreover, technology-driven solutions have a vital impact on people’s health. As a result, such applications as Well Health can play a great role in the future of medicine, including nursing, one of the major components of the treatment process. This platform is an industry’s changemaker that may enrich the healthcare system with new concepts and technologies. In the discussed hospital, researchers aim to gather more information and see how instant communication affects provider-patient relations and the overall quality of care.
References
Fawcett, J. (2017). Applying conceptual models of nursing: Quality improvement, research, and practice. New York, NY: Springer
Giddens, J.F., Caputi, L., & Rodgers, B.L. (2015). Mastering concept-based teaching: A guide for nurse educators. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.
Well Health. (n.d.). Product overview. Web.