Telenursing gains momentum
Telenursing is a subspecialty of the larger field of telehealth. Telenursing uses telecommunication devices in order to deliver nursing care, including the coordination of patient care and management.
Telenursing is the future
Although telehealth is not new, momentum in this field of health care is growing today. In 1997 the American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing published AAACN Telehealth Standards to direct nursing practice in this developing area of nursing. Since then, telenursing has been gaining momentum as indicated by the fact that the American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing spotlights a telehealth track at its annual conference in the spring. Featured telenursing topics at its 2011 conference in San Antonio include telephone triage outcomes, legal issues in telenursing, and managing outbound calling programs.
Loretta Schlacta-Fairchild, PhD, RN, is the founder and President of iTelehealth, Inc. She sees “the practice of telenursing as the catalyst that can completely reframe our profession and take nursing into the 21st century.” Viewing telenursing as an emerging role in today’s healthcare world, she cites the following benefits of this new technology:
- Reducing costs
- Reaching populations in rural, mostly underserved areas
- Reducing transportation time and cost for patients and providers
- Better access to care
- Improved productivity in the home health care field
Telenursing is now utilized in telephone call centers and in treating the chronically ill at home through the use of TeleCare devices.
Telephone call centers
Telephone call centers, formerly labeled telephone triage centers, such as “Ask-A-Nurse,” only partially describe the scope of telehealth nursing. Today this involves assessing, evaluating an individualized plan of care, and communicating that care plan to the patient, within a 10-minute time frame over the phone. Making use of protocols and guidelines, telehealth nurses assess, prioritize, develop care plans, educate, and evaluate outcomes. The difference reported by nurses is the knowledge level and expectations of today’s more well-informed patients. Due to the rapidly growing Internet information library, they expect instantaneous diagnoses and treatment options. This fact alone requires telehealth nurses to be able to efficiently utilize critical-thinking, in addition to possessing very strong clinical assessment skills as well as communication abilities.
TeleCare devices for chronically ill patients
Minority Nurse Magazine describes how VNA of Ohio uses TeleCare devices to monitor a variety of patient data for the chronically ill population it serves. Patients are given a small home monitoring device no larger than an alarm clock and, through this instrument, their vital signs, blood sugar, weight, and oxygen saturation level can be electronically sent through a telephone jack back to the VA nurse. These electronic devices enable nurses to serve more patients more efficiently, as well as improve the abilities of patients to monitor the process of their own disease. Current ongoing research at Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland State University studies the effectiveness of these devices with regard to lower hospital admission rates.
To keep up with current practice, many nursing programs now include heavy emphasis on computerized tools for learning, and in hospitals there is increased use of mobile phone devices for communicating between patient and nurse, as well as for nurse-to-nurse communication. Telenursing is here to stay, although it will never replace a nurse.
