Telehealth
Student A. Sample
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Telehealth
Introduction
There has been a significant evolution in the field of healthcare, and this evolution has been made even more pronounced as technology becomes more embedded in healthcare. This evolution aided by technology has made healthcare more accessible, more efficient and improved the spa of healthcare to the underserved. One of the technologies that has played a vital role in this evolution telehealth. Telehealth is the use of both digital information and communication technologies for patient care, and it has been used to offer care remotely to patients, In essence, telehealth has eliminated the physical and logistical barriers that have plagued patient care of eons. Through telehealth, not only can people from underserved communities access care with minima restraints, telehealth has also been deployed for the purposes of improving health outcomes by facilitating telemedicine. This annotated bibliography will explore research on telehealth to assess its impact on patient safety, quality of care, nursing practice and interdisciplinary care. This specific technology has been selected because of its potential to address health disparities by improving access to care for those individuals that are in one way or the other unable to access healthcare.
The sources used in this bibliography were sourced from two databases and these are ‘PubMed’ and ‘CINAHL’. The search terms used were “telehealth, telemedicine, remote healthcare”. The data was filtered to ensure that the publications were all published within the last five years, and then they were all scholarly sources.
Annotated Bibliography
Doraiswamy, S., Abraham, A., Mamtani, R., & Cheema, S. (2020). Use of Telehealth During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Scoping Review. Journal of medical Internet research, 22(12), e24087. https://doi.org/10.2196/24087
In this article, Doraiswamy et al.(2020) explored the use of telehealth during the pandemic through scoping existing literature published during the pandemic. The study revealed that the pandemic. motivated an unprecedented growth in the use of telehealth, with research highlighting that telehealth was used by the general population to seek multiple components of healthcare and that it had been adopted in various health disciplines. According to this source, this technology can contribute to patient safety and quality of care, since telehealth can be used across different healthcare disciplines. This improves patient safety and quality of care as different physicians from different disciplines can all work together to positively contribute to proper patient care and higher quality of patient care. Nurses, playing a pertinent role in coordination of care can use these technologies to also contribute to optimal patient outcomes by similarly participating in interprofessional care.
One of the greatest arguments against. telehealth is the scope with which it can be used, with some arguing that the scope of telehealth is limited. This article, however, shows that telehealth can be used on various specialties and subspecialties of internal medicine, in addition to being used in various components of clinical care and this makes the article relevant for this study.
Freed, J., Lowe, C., Flodgren, G., Binks, R., Doughty, K., & Kolsi, J. (2018). Telemedicine: Is it really worth it? A perspective from evidence and experience. Journal of innovation in health informatics, 25(1), 14–18. https://doi.org/10.14236/jhi.v25i1.957
In this article, Freed et al. (2018) try to answer the question of whether an investment in telemedicine is really worth it. The researchers conducted a review of systematic review evidence and illustrative case studies to find the answers to their research questions. The study found that the benefits of telemedicine are not hinged on the technology itself, rather, the context in which the technology is implemented in the organization and the organization’s ability to implement the technology. According to the authors, in theory, this technology would be a great addition to any facility but this works as long as all the users do what is required of them. For instance, the researchers postulated that when a user fails to send in vital signs then telemedicine will fail as it will impede the proper decision making. Through these findings, it is evident that telemedicine can work to improve patient safety by providing a mode of communication between the patients and their healthcare provider, thus facilitating proper decision making. In nursing practice, the availability of information is fundamental and through telemedicine, not only can nurses receive such information upfront, but also share it with interdisciplinary team members. This publication was selected due to its unique approach in highlighting the benefits of telehealth. According to the study, the success of telehealth is only as good as the efforts the users put into it and thus, for those organizations seeking to implement telehealth, this resource is import in helping them understand just how important of a role the uses of telehealth play in ensuring the success of the technology.
Manocchia A. (2020). Telehealth: Enhancing Care through Technology. Rhode Island medical journal (2013), 103(1), 18–20. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32013298/
Manocchia (2020) explores telehealth in the United States. In this article the author explored the telehealth landscape in the United States and the ideal state of telehealth in the United States. According to this source, telehealth has been immensely beneficial in healthcare by bridging coverage gaps especially in the Western areas of the United States and among young adults. Based on these statistics, nurses can use this technology to reach more of their patients, especially the young adults, as they are more prone to using this technology. This would be important for nursing practice as telehealth would make his patient pain more accessible, limit barriers to access and improve the health outcomes this population.
This article was selected because aside from highlighting the vital role that telehealth would play in healthcare, it includes pertinent statistics that healthcare practitioners can use to understand which are the population that they should target for telehealth. This is because the resources list the trends for telehealth in the United States, and gives insight into which populations are most accessible to telehealth. Finally, this is a recent resource that was published in. reputable medical journal and thus, it is a credible resource.
Nelson R. (2017). Telemedicine and Telehealth: The Potential to Improve Rural Access to Care. The American journal of nursing, 117(6), 17–18. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NAJ.0000520244.60138.1c
In this study Nelson (20170 highlights that one of the gaps that telehealth is likely to seal is access to care in rural areas. Rural areas are some of the most underserved areas medially and thanks to telehealth, individuals living in these areas can all receive the healthcare that they need. According to these findings, telehealth can improve the health outcomes of people living in rural areas and enhance their safety and the quality of care they receive by making the scarce healthcare resource available to them. This will reduce the burden to nursing practice, as better health outcomes of people living in rural areas means that the burden on healthcare and nursing has been reduced. Most importantly, telehealth plays a vital role in ensuring that nurses have a platform to participate in health promotion and illness prevention for patients in rural communities. This resource was selected due to its unique focus on the benefits of telehealth to patients in rural communities.
Recommendations
Based on these findings, the major benefit of telehealth is to make healthcare more accessible to the public and most importantly, to underserved populations. For instance Nelson (2017) points out that telehealth has shown exemplary potential in offering care to those patients living in medically underserved communities and this provides an important opportunity for telehealth. That said, however, it is important to understand that in order for telehealth to meet these needs, the selection process of the technology has to be well determined in order to ensure that the technology used is accessible to the target patient audience. Therefore, when selecting a technology to use it is important that the organization identifies that the technology can actually be accessed by the patient population and that there is adequate infrastructure to promote the use of the technology. The publication by Freed et al. (2018) pointed out one major factor at most organizations have to understand before implementing telemedicine and this is that it is vital to ensure that all users are doing what is expected of them such as relaying of information on time. Therefore, based on this analysis, this paper recommend that when organizations have decided on which telehealth platform they will use, it is important to educate all users, practitioners and patients alike, on their role with regards to telemedicine and what they need in order to ensure that the system works as it is meant to.
References
Doraiswamy, S., Abraham, A., Mamtani, R., & Cheema, S. (2020). Use of Telehealth During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Scoping Review. Journal of medical Internet research, 22(12), e24087. https://doi.org/10.2196/24087
Freed, J., Lowe, C., Flodgren, G., Binks, R., Doughty, K., & Kolsi, J. (2018). Telemedicine: Is it really worth it? A perspective from evidence and experience. Journal of innovation in health informatics, 25(1), 14–18. https://doi.org/10.14236/jhi.v25i1.957
Manocchia A. (2020). Telehealth: Enhancing Care through Technology. Rhode Island medical journal (2013), 103(1), 18–20. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32013298/
Nelson R. (2017). Telemedicine and Telehealth: The Potential to Improve Rural Access to Care. The American journal of nursing, 117(6), 17–18. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NAJ.0000520244.60138.1c