Health care Professionals' experiences of counselling competence in digital care pathways – A descriptive qualitative study

Abstract

Aim: Health care professionals are tasked with the role of supporting patients in using eHealth services in their personal care and counselling competence in digital environments to ensure appropriate patient care. Our aim was to describe health care professionals' experiences of counselling competence in Digital Care Pathways.Design: A descriptive qualitative study. Methods:Interviews with semi-structured questions were conducted. Twelve healthcare professionals were interviewed. The data were analysed using inductive content analysis. The results were reported according to the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research. Results: The analysis revealed eight distinct areas of competence related to counselling in Digital Care Pathways, namely, counselling competences related to the use of Digital Care Pathways, supporting patients' self-care, information technology competence, competence in creating an interactive counselling relationship on the Digital Care Pathway, information management, ethical competence related to counselling in Digital Care Pathways, competence to developing Digital Care Pathways services, and change competence.No Public or Patient Contribution: Due to the complex and unpredictable circumstances of COVID, people's strict confinement in the hospital prohibited free access to them and the study environment. Therefore, the professionals involved in the study were interviewed through online systems.

Quality And Factors influencing Healthcare in KSA (Systematic literature review)

“…In our study, Ensuring a competent and knowledgeable experience and competencies of HCPs were identified as significant contributors to healthcare quality. Similar outcomes were also identified in a study by Kaihlaniemi et al (2023) that examined the relationship between nurse staffing and patient outcomes. The study found that hospitals with a higher proportion of nurses with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) degree had lower mortality rates and better patient outcomes.…”

Healthcare professionals' digital health competence profiles and associated factors: A cross‐sectional study

“…This finding is also supported by previous research as healthcare professionals, specifically nurses, evaluated their competence in working in a digital environment as low (Kujala et al, 2018;Saranto et al, 2022). Counselling in digital environments has become an important channel in patient care delivery (Kaihlaniemi et al, 2023). In our study, this includes the competence to guide and support patients to use digital services according to their needs, communicate with patients using digital solutions, and work in the digital healthcare environment.…”

“…In our study, this includes the competence to guide and support patients to use digital services according to their needs, communicate with patients using digital solutions, and work in the digital healthcare environment. Lower competence in remote counselling could be argued to be explained by lack of training (Kujala et al, 2018) and therefore expertise in the area (Kaihlaniemi et al, 2023), but also the fact that not necessarily all respondents use remote counselling or digital environments in…”

“…Not all professionals are required to utilize digital channels in patient counselling, at least not yet, but they might still need the development of digital health competence in other areas. For example, remote counselling competence is related to clinical competence and overall patient involvement skills (Kaihlaniemi et al, 2023).…”

“…Therefore, digital health competence can be considered as one aspect of healthcare professionals' core competence (Al Jabri et al, 2021). In the future, the increasing use of artificial intelligence in clinical decisionmaking (Giordano et al, 2021) and patient encounters in digital environments (Kaihlaniemi et al, 2023), the emergence of proactive ePatients (Ammenwerth, 2018) and issues related to health data management (Kolitsi et al, 2021) present new opportunities and challenges for healthcare professionals' work role and competence requirements.…”