Services Offered through Tele-Nursing - Research Paper Example

? Tele-nursing Introduction In the development of technology in the current world, developers have identifiedmany areas that require special support so that practitioners can achieve high efficiency in providing services. The development in technology has happened to counter the limitations that are brought about by distance, the nature of the environment in which people are living and the changing world culture. This means that the focus of every development in the human life has targeted these factors so that they can ensure equitable delivery of services. In the field of nursing, there have been such kinds of technological development that target to address the problems of long distance between the caregivers and the receivers of the care. This has led to the development of a telecommunication system in nursing that enhances communication and ensures that many people from distant places can receive care according to the plan. Tele-nursing is a technology that ensures that communication in the field of nursing is easier than when the nurses have to travel to the places where patients are situated. This technology has come to ensure that the services like consultation, patient education, examination of test results and, therefore, assisting the physicians to administer treatment and the technology are used in transmission of medical record from one place to another. This technology in nursing has a lot of benefits that can ensure that nurses are able to provide care to as many patients as they could at a low cost and within a short time (MEDINFO, Kuhn, Warren & Leong, 2007). Discussion Background Nursing practitioners offer a variety of services to their clients and in different places in the world. This means that these nurses are required to travel to different places to meet their clients and provide the services that they need and carry out a follow up to the things that they need to ensure that those clients recover from their ailments. At one time, a nurse may have more than five patients whose health statuses he or she needs to track and afterwards prepare a report that shows the history of the services they have offered. When patients are not located within the same locality, the nurse may have to travel too much, and therefore, he or she will spend a lot of money on transport to achieve his or her goals. This means that the development of a system that would reduce frequent movement to patients is good to ensure that they can receive nursing care at their convenient time. The development of tele-nursing is a technological development that will ensure that many patients can access the required services from anywhere in the world (Briggs, 2007). Services offered through Tele-nursing Tele-nurses offer similar services as other nurses who use travelling mode to avail information to and acquire it from patients in a particular place in the world. This means that all people who need care from the nurses link up through telecommunication systems to get the information they need in their different situations. The services that these patients receive may vary according to the problem from which they are suffering and which may need immediate or delayed care. Briggs (2007) notes that the services that tele-nurses offer include professional consultancy in which a patient seeks information about a particular condition. The tele-nurse involved in a situation may choose from various media through which he or she can provide the information that his or her client needs. This could be through calling, sending text message, faxing, emailing or any other electronic method that conveniently transmit information from one place to another. Tele-nurses transmit medical records that physicians may need to enable them to administer treatment to a patient who seeks care from them. This will mean that they will not need to transport through physical means the records that they have collected about the patient for whom they are caring. Tele-nurses may transmit this information through e-mails and or faxing or any other electronic method that ensure that the information reaches the target within the shortest time possible and ensure that patients receive immediate attention. Other services that the tele-nursing communication systems are able to achieve are providing patient education and transmission of data that will enhance examination of test results. These services ensure that tele-nurses are able to provide their clients with the very convenient information without necessarily going to the place where the patients stay in the environment (Kumar & Snooks, 2011). Advantages of Tele-nursing MEDINFO, Kuhn, Warren and Leong (2007) point out that the services of tele-nurses are convenient because patients do not have to travel to the nursing centers. This means that patients or the clients of tele-nurses can get information about their health instantly because the response can take a very short time to process. Tele-nursing is cheaper as compared to other forms of nursing because there is no transport costs that patients or nurses have to incur to have the information reach the client even from a long distance. This is because information is sent through different electronic media, and the clients can read it from wherever they may be living without moving to the place. Tele-nurses can offer detailed information to the clients because they are within the environment of their work. This would help them to provide the details that would be able to elaborate the information that they offer to patients through the electronic media through adding diverse explanation. This is because they can send photos and diagrams that illustrate the information that they are offering to the patient that would help them to understand the condition through which they are going and the ways in which they can mitigate it. Another advantage of tele-nursing to the patients is that it can provide information that is easy to retrieve in future, and therefore, a patient can be able to monitor his or her condition with time. This means that a patient does not need to seek frequently the nurses’ assistance to monitor the condition (MEDINFO, Kuhn, Warren & Leong, 2007). According to Kumar and Snooks (2011), tele-nursing is free from the limitation of weather, the terrain, distance between the nurses and the patient as well as time of the day. This is because the ease of transmission of information may not be impaired by these factors, and there may be no need for physical connection between the two places. Limitations of tele-nursing In transmission of information to the target, tele-nursing may not be the most convenient way for all the people. This is because some impairment may prevent patients from receiving the information that a tele-nurse sends to them. Such impairment may include sight and hearing problems, which are needed in case the information is transmitted through methods that need a person to read or listen to clips that have been presented. Another thing that may limit tele-nursing may include illiteracy in information technology, which would mean that a person is unable to access the information that is sent through electronic media. This would mean that patients would need assistance from other people, which would be against the ethical requirement that information about a patient should not be disclosed to others (Kumar & Snooks, 2011). Conclusion The need for tele-nursing cannot be over-emphasized considering the increasing demand for it in different cases of health problems. Tele-nursing provides a system through which people can access information conveniently and efficiently without incurring extra costs. However, there are limitations in cases where the individuals have physical or technological challenges because they cannot access the information by reading or listening. Even with these issues, tele-nursing remains to be a very convenient way of providing most nursing services to patients without the limitations of distances. References Briggs, J. K. (2007). Telephone triage protocols for nurses. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins. Kumar, S., & Snooks, H. (2011). Telenursing. London: Springer. MEDINFO, Kuhn, K. A., Warren, J. R., & Leong, T.-Y. (2007). Medinfo 2007: Proceedings of the 12th world congress on health (medical) informatics : building sustainable health systems. Amsterdam: IOS Press. Read More