Telenursing. Is It My Future? (Research Paper Sample)

Telenursing
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Telenursing
Advancement of technology has affected many sectors through the transformations it has brought. It has made accomplishment of tasks easier, efficient and accurate. With the technology having its share in most areas of a country’s development like transport, agriculture and entertainment, healthcare has not been left behind. Healthcare practitioners are also embracing technology in the provision of services through aspects like telenursing. Telenursing involves the use of telecommunications and information technology to provide nursing services mainly in circumstances where a large physical distance exists between patient and nurse. It is helpful in ensuring that patients are accorded with the care they need even if the nurses are not available. The aspect of telenursing that is a branch of telehealth fascinates me into researching whether it can be a good pick for me. This paper gives a description of telenursing and a question of whether it is good to go by (Sharpe, 2001).
Telenursing is very important especially when it comes to home care. It is one of the most distinctive telenursing applications for home care because it helps patients who are immobilized. It is effective in assisting those patients that live in remote and difficult to reach places providing a platform whereby patients in regions that are termed as unreachable get specialized care from the comfort of their homes. Citizens who have chronic ailments such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, congestive heart disease, or debilitating diseases, such as neural degenerative diseases mostly stay at home and the telenursing technology comes as a savior for them. They can be regularly assisted the nurses through video conferencing where they are advised on means to control their conditions. They also have a chance to order for drugs online which are then delivered to their homes. Basically, in normal home health care, a nurse can visit an average of 5-7 patients per day but with telenursing, the same nurse can visit (attend to online) 12-16 patients for the same amount of time (Nelson, Joos & Wolf, 2013).
Telenursing acts as an effective tool for diagnosis and consultation. Research concerning the use of telenursing for diagnosing a disease proves that it has been very successful in diagnosing. An example of a disease that has been diagnosed using this technology is acute leukemia. Apart from the diagnosis, the use of information technology has enhanced education sessions for the providers (nurses) as well as patient education and psychosocial counseling. Through this technology, nurses can offer education and counseling through a two-way audio and video technology. In case of home care health nurses can use telehealth equipment to consult with specialists regarding a particular patient (Global Telehealth Conference. 2010).
Telenursing as a tool for healthcare brings benefits for both patients and personnel. An example as discussed above is the improvement of resources, time allocation and access for patients. This technique is one method of managing limited resources in healthcare. It is more so efficient, time-saving with a provision to increase patients’ access to self-care. Research shows that telenursing is expanding in many western countries as part of health care. It is a complex and knowledge-intensive as the nurses can work independently, make decisions about patients’ needs for further care and offer advice on self-care or referring a patient to a source of help (Burkhardt & Nathaniel, 2014).
Telenursing technique comes as a central concept in nursing but it entails some ethical difficulties. Ethical behavior is an accepted part of nursing competencies. It deals with the questions such as the manner in which we should lead our lives and how to relate and behave toward other people. The ethical issues in telenursing that reveal much concern are the aspects of privacy, security, confidentiality and autonomy.
Issue of autonomy
In telenursing, the nurse cannot determine whether the patient who is calling for assistance is the actual patient. The fact is that the caller might be a relative or a parent calling on behalf of a sick child or a husband calling on behalf of a sick wife. Such a case can make the nurse experience a situation of conflict between patient’s autonomy and those making the call. In normal circumstances, the nurse always strives to speak to the patient himself but situations of other people calling affect the concept of respect that may occur between the nurse and the patient (Sharpe, 2001).
Issue of integrity
The concept of integrity as an ethical issue is not maintained in telenursing. The nurses’ encounter with the person over the phone does not provide for body language and facial expressions that the nurse can use to determine the patient’s problem. This means therefore that decisions from the nurse are made based on the verbal communication that the caller reveals and it can sometimes be deceiving where the patient is faking some illness (Burkhardt & Nathaniel, 2014).
Privacy and Confidentiality Matters
Privacy and Confidentiality is an important aspect in the nursing ethics. However, with telenursing, this aspect sometimes ceases to exist. This is because providing care to a patient through the online platform is exposed to various risks. Sometimes there can be issues of hacking on the internet and a patient’s information faces the risk of being spread online providing a massive drawback for such a patient. Such a scenario can lower a patient’s self-esteem especially when his/her condition is revealed exposing such patient to stigmatization (Nelson, Joos & Wolf, 2013).
Acting as a telenurse provides one with a wide variety of tasks in terms of servic...