The changing landscape of patient care, driven by greater consumer engagement, practice-driven technologies, and virtual health care, provides a unique context for teaching and learning. Incorporating technology improves active teaching strategies and the means to evaluate learning outcomes. The National League for Nursing recognizes the need to reframe how nursing students are taught and how graduates engage with patients and caregivers in the connected age of health care.
The NLN supports nurse educators and practicing nurses to meet the needs of our technology-rich health care and education environments. Connections forged across the changing technological landscape create opportunities for learning, working, and collaborating on an unprecedented scale. Teaching with and about emerging technology is the future of nursing education. Providing nursing care in a highly technological, connected work environment is the future of nursing practice.
BACKGROUND
A number of developments have changed the face of health care delivery.
* Consumer Engagement in Health. Providing patients with their data in a rapid manner, alongside appropriate guidance and coaching, will be the new patient engagement model. Patient-centered care and personalized health take on new meanings as patients become active members of the health care team.
* On-Demand Access to Technological Applications and Data Storage. Consumers and health care professionals can readily access health information to analyze patterns of health and illness trajectories, lifestyle changes, and social networks. Nurses are increasingly called upon to lead and participate in teams that design these data initiatives.
* Virtual Health Care. Today's health care visits, inpatient and outpatient, are dominated by traditional face-to-face encounters with providers. Yet, virtual technologies change access to care and support the growing trend of health care management from episodic to continuous care. Telecommunication technologies can enable nursing and medical teams to provide health management services on a continuum from chronic illness to acute injuries, using telemedicine to support primary care providers.
RECOMMENDATIONS
For the Nursing Education Community
* Develop teaching teams with informatics and/or technology skills by adding instructional designers and informatics specialists to facilitate course design and operationalize classroom technology.
* Create incentive-based programs to build faculty competence in teaching with and about technology.
* Provide institutional support to increase educator competency and skill with technologies (e.g., TIGER, QSEN, AACN Essentials, American Health Information Management Association [AHIMA]).
* Provide financial support for faculty development in informatics education and simulation technologies.
The full text of the NLN Vision statement is online:http://www.nln.org/aboutnln/livingdocuments/pdf/nlnvision_8.pdf
For Nurse Faculty
* Expand educator horizons to incorporate health promotion and health maintenance; include the patient as a central member of the team using health information technology.
* Seek learning opportunities to develop technological skills and knowledge to move students forward in the connected age of health care.
* Identify ways to work more efficiently with workplace technologies.
* Collaborate with practice partners to increase opportunities for contextual learning by designing clinical encounters using technology and simulation across the continuum of care.
* Develop learning activities that incorporate the shift to public health and community health resources and aggregate and population-based data.
* Create clinical experiences for students to assess consumer eHealth literacy and assist patients to translate data for meaningful use.
For the NLN
* Collaborate with key stakeholders (e.g., National Students Nurses' Association, AHIMA, AARP, Institute of Medicine Patient Forum) to inform best practices in the use of technology in teaching and learning and to address the way patients engage with providers and access information.
* Provide faculty development to:
* Incorporate competencies in informatics and technology throughout the program of learning.
* Align curricula with current technological advances and consumer engagement.
* Enhance faculty expertise in active learning teaching strategies with and about technology to better engage students in the learning process.
* Create a repository of shared teaching/learning resources focused on the use of technology in nursing programs and practice-driven informatics.
* Engage with technology partners and the nursing education community to develop new technological resources and seek broad bases of funding to facilitate faculty development and the use of emerging technologies to advance the health of the nation.