Are Nurses Ready for Digital Health?

Background and Objectives: Nurses play a crucial role as front-line care providers in every facet of healthcare. Since digital technologies support and augment the quality and responsive healthcare delivery to modern healthcare systems, it is important to assess nurses’ preparedness for digital health to provide better care. This review aimed to synthesize literature on nurses’ preparedness for digital health mainly based on informatics education, competencies, challenges and barriers.

Methods: A systematic search and a narrative review were carried out using scientific databases such as PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar to reach scientific literature published in the English language published between 2002 and 2022. A systematic method was followed using PRISMA (2009) flow diagram to select the articles, and data were extracted considering factors such as informative, complete and applicable timeliness of articles. Key findings were synthesized via a narrative review under identified four main areas.

Findings: Twenty-four papers focusing on digital health were identified. Four main areas emerged in the literature, including (i) informatics education (ii) informatics knowledge and skills (iii) digital health practices (iv) challenges and barriers. Nursing informatics (NI) education is the major concern of improving knowledge, skills and competencies ensuring nurses’ ability to use informatics to provide safe and quality care.

Conclusion: Findings support the further need for advanced NI education, training, and facilities to improve nurses’ capacity to work in digitalized clinical settings. Continuous research is needed to provide clear direction about the required clinical informatics competencies of graduate nurses and practicing nurses. Suggestions for preparing skillful nursing professionals based on NI education and practice are to be discussed in the future.