“Unprecedented technological capabilities combined with unlimited human creativity have given us tremendous power to take on intractable problems like poverty, unemployment, disease, and environmental degradation. Our challenge is to translate this extraordinary potential into meaningful change.” Muhammad Yunus

INTRODUCTION:

The Digital Revolution refers to the advancement of technology from analogue electronic and mechanical devices to the digital technology available today. The era started during the 1980s and is ongoing. This also marks the beginning of the Information Era.

The emerging field of connected or digital healthcare is rapidly becoming a reality and has the potential to wedge itself into a staid system that has been averse to change.

The Digital Revolution comes to US Healthcare known as the next frontier for the Internet of Things. They are Remote patient monitoring, Tele-health and behavioural modification. These platforms hold the promise of improving chronic disease management and reducing unnecessary costs.

Nurses constitute the largest single group of healthcare professionals and serve as providers and coordinators of care in every healthcare setting, have a profound impact on the quality and effectiveness of healthcare. They act on behalf of patients, families and other care providers to promote health, and advocate an environment of patient-centric care.

As coordinators of care, nurses are also the focal point for ensuring the data necessary for managing specific patients and populations are not only shared between acute, ambulatory, long-term, community-based, home care and public health settings but translated into action. Further, nurses are active in education, research and optimization of information systems throughout the healthcare system.

Yesterday's Nurses were actually educated and trained by the physician's themselves. They learned nursing in the field, with real patient's and real life situations. When the physician's felt they had sufficient training, these nurses were put into practice. They were very fortunate to have hands on, real world training.

Today's Nurses are taught mostly by nurses. The bulk of their educational setting consists of mundane classrooms, filled with books and simulated situations. The amount of time spent in the clinical setting with actual hands on training is small in comparison to the amount of time spent in the classroom. They are taught what is referred to as Ivory Tower book nursing, meaning what is ideal, not what is real.

The pioneers of Nursing who effectively combined the science of nursing with computer and information science to support the clinical workflow and began their journey to join the digital revolution. Recognizing the need to adapt to an increasingly rich and technology-enabled environment formed the Technology, Informatics, and Guiding Education Reform (TIGER) Initiative in 2006. The goal of TIGER is to better define workforce competencies and effectively interweave evidence and technology into practice, education, and research. In addition to basic computer literacy

Game-based education:

In advanced professional skills, Learning collaboration, communication, and clinical reasoning requires practice in many different situations, complex and stressful environments, and fast-paced clinical events. The flexibility, variety, and multitude of outcomes offered by games are uniquely able to provide such practice without any risk to patient

Virtual hospitals and patients can be used to allow learners to practice decision-making and prioritization of tasks in a variety of contexts, such as triage, patient condition changes, codes or resuscitation, and disaster response.

Complement to the Curriculum:

Game-based learning is best viewed as "an integrative step towards supervised clinical practice. Games can be used at many different points in the nursing education process that precede actual clinical practice with patients..

For example, take the basic nursing task of a sterile dressing change It could, of course, be taught by throwing the nurse into the situation with a patient on postoperative day 1 and talking him or her through each step. We have all learned this way, but it isn't necessarily the most effective, safe, or comfortable way to learn.

The sterile dressing change could also be taught by lecturing to the students with a slideshow to illustrate setting up a sterile field and going through the correct steps of a dressing change, or by having the students watch a video of a nurse preparing for and properly performing a sterile dressing change. Learners sit passively and try to remember all that they have seen on the slides or video. They might practice in a learning laboratory, and might or might not ever get the chance to perform a sterile dressing change in clinical, depending on patient availability.

Simulation:

Nurses have not only practiced on each other and on pieces of fruit, but they have examined, bathed, turned, injected, and dressed the wounds of patient proxies, such as dolls and mannequins, for more than a century. In 1949, for example, nursing instructors used chicken bones and a lamb's jaw, in doll-sized beds, to teach students how to apply traction to patients with fractures on the orthopaedic ward.

Nursing has long recognized the value of simulation in nursing education. For most modern nurses, practicing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on Resuscitate Anne was their introduction to mannequin-based simulation, but Anne was by no means the first "guinea pig" used by nurse educators.

In subsequent decades, simulation mannequins became more lifelike and sophisticated. Men, children, and babies joined the mannequin family. A huge jump in educational value occurred when interfaces with other technology, such as video cameras and computers, became possible. The field of simulation in healthcare education really took off, and it hasn't looked back since.

The primary drivers of simulation education have always been patient safety and limited opportunity in real life to practice all of the clinical skills necessary to become a full-fledged nurse. It is no surprise that given the choice, students prefer to practice on a patient who can't be harmed, and develop at least a modicum of comfort in performing a skill before they have to try it on a real patient.

Emerging Technologies That Will Change the Practice of Nursing:

“Virtual worlds, computer simulations, and serious video games represent the latest innovations in this field, education to help students and nurses bridge the gap between theory and nursing practice, like genetics and genomics; less invasive and more accurate tools for diagnosis and treatment; 3-D printing; robotics; biometrics; electronic health records; and computerized physician/provider order entry and clinical decision support etc will change the practice of nursing worldwide.

Yes, I do agree that Digital revolution is more of a boon than a bane to society. Preparing nurses for computerization is essential to confront an explosion of sophisticated computerized technology in the workplace.

It is critical in a competitive health care market for preparing nurses to use the most cost-effective methods. Nursing experts identifies six essential factors for preparing nurses for computerization. Strong leadership, effective communication, organized training sessions, established time frames, planned change, and tailored software are the essential factors to consider for development of a successful educational program.

Technology is nothing, What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.” ; Steve Jobs.

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Received on 27.04.2016 Modified on 26.05.2016

Int. J. Adv. Nur. Management. 2016; 4(3): 314-316.

DOI: 10.5958/2454-2652.2016.00070.6