August 17, 2023
Technological transformation has allowed for the introduction of innovative avenues for delivering healthcare to the masses. As technology becomes more common in the health sector, healthcare has become more attainable, reaching those with limited resources across larger geographical distances.
The successful integration of technology in the US healthcare sector is largely due to the pandemic. As cross-infection safety allowed for limited movement and reduced work output, many patients were left without regular, essential healthcare. Innovative technology such as telehealth and telemedicine helped address this issue.
Telehealth, either as a web-based or cloud-based technology, is a platform that allows patients and providers to connect to each other either through video or audio calls or through text chats for the purpose of giving and receiving adequate healthcare.
Although telehealth platforms were largely integrated by the healthcare industry to eliminate the barriers to receiving good healthcare during the pandemic, today, the technology poses several benefits for practices, allowing for seamless integration with other practice technologies to streamline clinical workflows efficiently.
Additionally, telehealth not only benefits healthcare providers and patients, but the technology can also help nursing professionals create seamless communication with patients. Let’s find out how:
Nursing professionals are essentially those care providers who can offer physical healthcare aid to patients in emergency conditions who are not necessarily able to help themselves. Additionally, nurses work in conjunction with doctors to provide adequate medical care to patients.
Telehealth platforms create a seamless and efficient avenue for patient-provider communication. This platform can also be utilized by nursing professionals to update patients regarding appointments, tackle appointment schedules, and relay core information to the doctor regarding any laboratory results, imaging, or imperative symptoms-related data that needs to be requested from the patient before the appointment.
This can help create a seamless workflow for diagnosis and treatment planning for patients through the telehealth platform.
Additionally, nurses can provide grief counselling to patients in distress and offer mental health education to certain social groups, such as inmates.
Finally, certain telehealth platforms provide educational resources to improve communication strategies through automated responses. Nurses can save time by interacting with patients in a way that can improve a patient’s healthcare experience at the practice.
Since medical care provision is incomplete without the role of nurses, telehealth platforms can allow nursing practitioners to collaborate with doctors in extracting core patient data from other technological systems, such as EHRs, and utilizing it along with telehealth platforms to formulate adequate treatment plans.
Since tracking progress is necessary to analyse the efficiency of treatment, nurses can record patient progress regularly to allow doctors to either continue or alter treatment plans accordingly.
Telehealth platforms are specifically beneficial when it comes to receiving mental healthcare. Nurses can conduct regular psychiatric evaluations for patients before each appointment and relay this information to the doctors before their first appointment, in order to maintain a thorough view of the patient's mental state during the visit.
Nurses, therefore, play an imperative role in acquiring patient histories and conducting essential medical evaluations for patients in order to drive effective healthcare experiences with telehealth.
Since telehealth platforms conduct several appointments through the same technology, nurses have access to a larger pool of patients within the same platform. This not only saves time but also allows for strategic multi-tasking as nurses are able to interact effectively with patients at the same time.
Through telehealth platforms, nurses can provide 24/7 counselling to patients. Not only does this improve efficiency, but it also helps improve the relationship between patients and their nurses, creating an overall positive experience for the patient.
Although telehealth helps improve care delivery for patients, research states that it is not the primary technology to improve family nursing. Telehealth, in collaboration with other technologies, can benefit practice staff, including nurses and healthcare providers, by creating substantially productive workflows for the practice.
Telehealth is a powerful platform that can provide both convenience and educational resources to drive effective outcomes in the field of family nursing. Telehealth platforms can allow nursing professionals to build on their skills by maneuvering their way through the technology to advance mental healthcare delivery, as well as contribute positively to the skilled healthcare workforce through their experience.
Since technology plays a pivotal role in driving clinical and administrative workflows, nursing professionals can substantiate their position in the industry by learning to integrate with technologies such as telehealth and TalkEHRs telehealth is an effective solution that combines user-friendliness with security and efficiency to provide a solution that ensures patients are well looked after, even online.
