Telehealth Competence in Nursing: Enhancing Skills and Practice in Providing Care Remotely

Abstract

Our healthcare landscape is transforming in response to the aging population, staff shortages and increasing technological possibilities. Telehealth is seen as a solution to help patients live independently in their own home and community. Today, the diffusion of telehealth is still hampered by several barriers. This thesis addressed the barrier of nurses lacking the required telehealth competencies. Based on six different studies, we propose the following five-step model to prepare nurses for providing telehealth care, which will subsequently transform their profession: 1) improve nurses’ intention, 2) define what nursing telehealth entrustable professional activities (NT-EPAs) are applicable to the nurse setting, 3) check what specific competencies are required, 4) assess nurses self-confidence in possessing these competencies, and 5) deliver training on the NT-EPAs. In the nurses’ transformed profession, nurses can play a key role in supporting older people’s technology use and enhance the elderly population’s ability to receive telehealth services. Our future nurses can be trained in telehealth care by integrating the NTEPAs into nursing schools’ curricula. Although several other barriers remain, the results of this thesis can be used to train current and future nurses. Adequate nurse training can accelerate telehealth diffusion and consequently contribute to older peoples’ opportunity to live independently in their own home.