What is it in the Modern World telenursing all about?

What is telenursing?

Telenursing refers to the use of telecommunications and information technology for providing nursing services in health care whenever a large physical distance exists between patient and nurse, or between any number of nurses. As a field it is part of telehealth, and has many points of contacts with other medical and non-medical applications, such as telediagnosis, teleconsultation, telemonitoring, etc.

Developments in telenursing are occurring at a great pace. In a very short time and driven by technical developments, the field of telenursing has become too extensive to be covered by only a small number of experts. As a consequence, there is a need for a broad overview of the field to enable the concepts to be understood by a wider population.

Telenursing is presented in such a way that it should make it accessible to anyone, independent of their knowledge of technology and has been written with contributions from a host of renowned international authorities in telenursing. Books on theoretical and technical aspects inevitably use technical jargon, and this book is no exception, but it is kept to a minimum in an effort to maximize clarity. Moreover the book has been organised systematically, thus ensuring that the content is concise and easy to read. Every chapter provides a comprehensive list of citations and references for further reading. Figure drawings and clinical photographs throughout the book illustrate and illuminate the text, providing readers with high-quality visual reference material. It is therefore appropriate for all professionals, including nurses, physicians, allied health professionals and computer scientists to help them understand the changes going on and how best to make use of them in practice.

 

The identified ethical dilemmas in telenursing also occur in other forms of nursing. However, telenursing might be particularly sensitive to ethics. For example, respect for autonomy and obtaining informed consent might be difficult when a woman calls in for her spouse, respect for integrity might be difficult in both the information and the documentation process, and the balancing of giving the patient honest information with the ethical demand to avoid harm, are all examples of ethical dilemmas that telenurses handle in their daily work. Hence, ethical competence building and ethical discussions on a regularly basis are needed for telenurses. Telenursing in healthcare brings advantages for both patients and personnel: for example, the improvement of resource- and time allocation and access for patients. However, this technique might also entail ethical difficulties.