Perceptions of pre-licensure nursing students toward telecare and telenursing

ABSTRACT

Telehealth transforms the healthcare system and provides the population with equal access to healthcare services at distance. This study aimed to investigate nursing students’ perceptions toward telenursing. Students’ knowledge, attitudes, advantages, disadvantages, barriers, and factors that affect the intention toward telenursing implementation were addressed. This study was conducted using a descriptive design. The study participants were 313 undergraduate nursing students. Data were gathered through a web-based survey from June to August 2022 and analyzed using SPSS version 22. Fifty-four-point-six percent (54.6%) of the students were male and 45.4% were female. Around one-fourth were internship students. Most students had access to the internet 97.4%. The results revealed that nursing students have positive perceptions toward telenursing. Their overall competencies in terms of knowledge, proficiency, awareness, and familiarity were moderate. Students raised some disadvantages and difficulties regarding telenursing; meanwhile, more advantages and suggestions to overcome the disadvantages were reported. It is of utmost importance that nursing education integrates telenursing content and practice to prepare future nurses for the successful implementation of telenursing. More research is still needed to examine the impact of telenursing on nursing practice. Nursing administrators must develop appropriate and prompt interventions to respond to the dramatically changing healthcare environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Nursing students
• telenursing
• competency
• perceptions

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the nursing students who willingly participated in this study and shared their perceptions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

Single author

Data availability statement

The datasets are not publicly available and are available from the corresponding author upon a reasonable request.

Institutional review board statement

The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Al-Ghad International College for Applied Medical Sciences Institutional Review Board (IRB No. GIC-ECM # June 12, 2022).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.