Telehealth is becoming a vital process for providing access to cost-effective quality care to patients at a distance. As such, it is important for nurse practitioners, often the primary providers for rural and disadvantaged populations, to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to utilize telehealth technologies in practice. In reviewing the literature, very little information was found on programs that addressed nurse practitioner training in telehealth. This article provides an overview of both the topics and the techniques that have been utilized for training nurse practitioners and nurse practitioner students in the delivery of care utilizing telehealth. Specifically, this article focuses on topics including 1) defining telehealth, 2) telehealth etiquette, 3) interprofessional collaboration, 4) regulations, 5) reimbursement, 6) security/Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), 7) ethical practice in telehealth, and 8) satisfaction of patients and providers. A multimodal approach based on a review of the literature is presented for providing the training: 1) didactics, 2) simulations including standardized patient encounters, 3) practice immersions, and 4) telehealth projects. Studies found that training using the multimodal approach allowed the students to develop comfort, knowledge, and skills needed to embrace the utilization of telehealth in health care.

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Background: Stroke prevention education is part of the continuum of stroke care. The effectiveness of improving stroke knowledge using a combined academic and community provider based stroke tele-education program specifically targeted to the rural faith community was evaluated. Objective: To determine if stroke tele-education increases knowledge about stroke prevention. Methods: A quasi-experimental nonequivalent one group pretest/posttest design using a convenience sample of 22 subjects (20% men, 80% women) with mean age of 55 was selected from a southern congregational community. Subjects completed pre-education surveys; received two 30-minute telehealth delivered education sessions weekly for 4 weeks, and completed post-intervention surveys. Results: A significant difference between pre-posttest knowledge (p≥0.05) and likelihood of reducing vascular risk factors (p≥0.05) after intervention was found. Satisfaction with delivery method was high as participants appreciated this unique solution to addressing community health needs through direct but remote expert stroke education. This program demonstrated that tele-education is effective in motivating subjects to reduce stroke risk factors. Thus, the stroke tele-education program had a positive impact on knowledge, likelihood of making behavioral changes, and being a satisfactory mode of education in a community congregational health setting. Conclusions: This project demonstrates effectiveness and feasibility of providing a high risk population access to telehealth stroke education by using faith-based community network leaders in collaboration with a remote site academia to rural underserved areas. Stroke tele-education was found to be satisfying, improved knowledge of stroke, and increased likelihood of making changes to decrease vascular risk factors. It provides the opportunity to increase community interaction and support among differing faith communities through collaboration with the medical community through use of telehealth.