Introduction
The government aims at ensuring the health care sector changes and grows by ensuring every person accesses quality and affordable care. According to Lombardo & Buckeridge (2007), one of the major barriers to the effective delivery of care is distance. Most people never access quality health care because they leave far away from hospitals. The use of technology in the health care sector has crossed the next level because almost every activity follows technology. Introduction of Tele-health helped solve the problem of distance and cost of health care. Tele-health involves using information and communication technology in delivering health care services to patients at a distance. Health care sectors and providers practice different types of Tele-health, but the most effective one is Tele-nursing. The practice of nursing has been on the front line ensuring availability of health care to all people irrespective of their distances from health care centers. Tele-nursing finds application whenever a need arises to deliver nursing care in a remote area (American Telemedicine Association, 2011). The following paper aims at discussing Tele-nursing, its benefits and limitations and knowledge of the practice helps nurse practitioners achieve their dreams.
Professional nurses role in Tele-health
Nursing practice plays a role consistent with the approach of primary health care and philosophy in Tele-health. Nurses have close contact with patients making them the most targeted healthcare providers in implementing Tele-health. The nursing practice in Tele-health should be integrated to other health-care services. Modern technologies improve nurses’ accessibility, efficiency, and effectiveness in providing competent, safe, and ethical health-care services. On the other hand, nurses have a duty of maintaining perfect nurse-patient relationship. Using Tele-health nursing technology (Tele-nursing) helps improve the bond between the two through constant communication and sharing of information through the internet. The main duties of a nurse in the nurse-patient relationship in Tele-health involves identifying patient needs, planning, and implementing health strategies aimed at improving the patient’s outcome. Nurse practitioners achieve the role of Tele-health by providing information, education, support, and referral to patients during evaluation of outcomes. In addition, the client’s spiritual, physiological, and cultural needs help nurses in delivering effective Tele-health services (Canadian Nurses Association, 2007). The above information is all what Manuel needs to understand before attending an interview in the Tele-nurse Specialist Position.
Advantages and disadvantages of Tele-nursing
Tele-nursing technology offers many advantages to both the patient and the care provider. The interview panel must ask Manuel this question; hence he must deeply understand the pros and cons of Tele-nursing especially in the caring for elderly and people with chronic illnesses.
Advantages to the nurse practitioner
Understanding the concept of Tele-nursing offer Manuel a better chance of securing a job with the Nurse-owned Home Agency. Firstly, Tele-nursing allows practitioner effectively manage time. Manuel will get a chance of managing his time effectively and plan for visits with patients at his convenience. Tele-health nurses need not report to the office that offers practitioners humble time to attend to other personal matters of concern. Secondly, the practice improves the convenience of the practitioner in offering health care. The presence of the internet and technologically advanced mobile gadgets that allow easier and fast sharing of information promotes the convenience of the practitioner. The practitioner can easily instruct the patient on what to do without using a video-link or recorded movie without having any physical contact. In doing so, the technology saves the practitioner travel expenses, delays, and family separations. Tele-nursing also creates new employment opportunities to fresh graduate nurses and improve the field of nursing that currently suffers from a shortage of nurses.
Advantages to the patient
Implementing Tele-nursing in a community makes the people enjoy access to quality and improved care at their door steps. Tele nurses involve in general monitoring and surveillance of patient’s health on a daily basis minimizing chances of a patient visiting health-care institution to seek medical attention. Secondly, the practice makes people in the society more responsible for their health while at their respective homes. The Nurse-owned home health agency where Manuel wishes to start new career aims at keeping elderly and chronically ill people from getting readmitted to the hospital after dispersal. Tele-nursing helps in achieving these goals because continuous assessment by professional nurses ensures these people stay healthy all the time. In addition, the advices and education offered by the Tele-nursing program promote patient’s health and the health of other members of the society reducing normal hospital visits. Additionally, patients enjoy happy lifestyle because the program reduces the number of emergency cases caused by poor health (Hughes, 2008).
The program also helps people leaving in remote areas access quality and improved health care on a daily basis. In areas societies where people are technological illiterate, Tele nurses make frequent visits and take health care to the people as they educate them on how to utilize new technologies. Patients are more health secure and cared for by the government reducing disorders caused by isolation and stress (Glinkowski, Pawlowska, and Kozlowska, 2013).
Disadvantages
Tele-nursing introduces many challenges to both the practitioner and the patient in the following form. Firstly, the practice cuts direct contact between the patient and the physician. The following issues become a big challenge to the practitioner especially when a patient has chronic problems. The practitioner prescribes treatment to a patient through the phone, which might cause issues when the patient uses wrong instructions. The nurse takes responsibility of any patient outcome, and wrong medication might cause one his or her job. Lack of physical interaction with the client makes it hard for the practitioner to monitor the healing process. In most instances, patients claim to be okay but they are not totally healed in order to avoid costs associated with purchasing medication. Secondly, Tele-nurses lack features of nursing such as intuitional nursing that allows one gain experience in the career and achieve higher ranks. Because nurses rarely interact with patients, it limits evidence-based practices and nurses gains fewer skills in their career.
Conclusion
As stated earlier, the discussion aimed at advising Manuel on the basics of Tele-nursing that would help him pass the interview with the nurse-owned home health agency and prepare for the new position as the Tele-nurse Specialist. The discussion has thoroughly analyzed the role of nurses in Tele-nursing. In addition, it offers main advantages and disadvantages of the practice of Tele-nursing to the health care, the practitioner and the patient. The health care sector should promote programs that encourage utilization of the current technology because they help in improving health-care services and patient outcomes especially to the vulnerable populations. Elderly people and these with chronic illnesses bear higher risks of health, but implementing Tele-health helps them out of health dangers. As a recommendation, Manuel should undertake the new position and call upon other nurses to follow the suit in order promote health care in the society and the country as a whole.
References
American Telemedicine Association. (2011). Telehealth Nursing Fact Sheet. Retrieved November 13, 2014 from
http://www.americantelemed.org/docs/default-document-library/fact_sheet_final.pdf?sfvrsn=2
Canadian Nurses Association. (2007). Tele-health: The role of the nurse. Available at
http://cna-aiic.ca/~/media/cna/page-content/pdf-en/ps89_telehealth_e.pdf
Glinkowski, W., Pawlowska, K., and Kozlowsla, L. (2013). Telehealth and Telenursing
Perception and Knowledge Among University Students of Nursing in Poland. Telemedicine Journal and e-Health, 19(7), 523-529
Hughes, R. (2008). Patient Safety, Telenursing, and Telehealth. Patient safety and quality: an evidence-based handbook for nurses (pp. 1-37). Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services.
Lombardo, J. S., & Buckeridge, D. L. (2007). Disease surveillance: a public health informatics
approach. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley-Interscience
