Vol.7, No.2 July 2001
Editorial | Contents
Editorial
Nursing and e-health care
Chris Peterson Ph.D
Co-ordinator, La Trobe University
Telehealth Education and Research Group
School of Public Health
La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria
In the current health care environment, e-health, e-healthcare and Telehealth have emerged as important concepts, worthy of the attention of a whole range of health care providers. E-health refers to the use of information technology in the field of health; e-healthcare is a newer term which focuses more specifically on the process of health care utilizing these technologies; Telehealth, on the other hand refers more to the policies involved in the implementation of IT and advanced technologies in health care, 90 per cent of which involves videoconferencing. It is a derivative of Telemedicine, which refers to the application of advanced technologies in clinical settings.
During the last year the federal government provided substantial subsidies for general practitioners to start using computers in their practice, and this has led to a major undertaking of computing in primary health care. Increasingly, health services are being placed online, with medical records moving to electronic versions and the Internet being used as a regular vehicle for health care databases and as a medium for regular health communications.
General Practice is also increasingly using decision support databases to aid in diagnosis and prescription, and there are even online services provided for diagnosis outside of regular general practice settings. Hospital in the home and Telehomecare facilities are providing home based monitoring services for the use of general practitioners and nurses, and in the more traditional, but still relatively new area of Telehealth, psychological services are increasingly being provided via teleconferencing, Teledermatology is being used to transmit tissue images to specialists, and Teleradiology is used quite routinely in some areas to transmit x-rays.
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In view of the plethora of e-healthcare developments the question arises as to how well prepared nurses are in their training to take on board these new IT and advanced technology developments, and how well they are prepared and trained to work in these new environments. General practitioners have subsidies for introducing computers, and there are a number of short training programs available to them. However, for nurses, there is a different picture. There is relatively little training in the use of these new technologies in health care to prepare them for a rapidly changing work environment.
One such course, which has just commenced in E-healthcare, is a three university offering of a graduate certificate, post-graduate diploma and masters course run through the Internet. This course is available Australia wide to nurses in both metropolitan, rural and remote locations. It is run conjointly by La Trobe University, the University of Southern Queensland and the University of Queensland Centre for Online Health, and has been funded by DETYA for three years to develop the courses, with nurses as a key group of course recipients. The university consortium plans to develop the course as a major national provider of e-healthcare training, particularly with nurses in mind. It provides a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the development of e-healthcare, hands-on experience in the utilisation of a number of e-healthcare and Telehealth technologies, and a critical evaluation framework so that students who complete the course will have skills for evaluating the efficacy of particular e-healthcare technologies and programs. The course has evaluation, technology, clinical, health sociology, and communications theory components and perspectives.
In a time when health care is becoming more globalised, and the government recognises the immediacy of health care technologies to the development of comprehensive health care programs in Australia, the training of nurses needs to accounted for to provide a workforce of prepared and skilled people for this emerging area. We feel that the development of such courses needs to be fostered and promoted in the health care training environment, and that nurses be given similar opportunities to develop e-healthcare skills as general practitioners and others in the medical profession.
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Last modified on: Monday, 16-May-2011 08:12:55 EST
