Nursing education in uncharted waters: Are we successfully navigating the industrial revolutions ahead?

Abstract

As technologies continue to revolutionise health care, the nursing industry must examine how effectively we utilise technology to prepare nurses to thrive and lead. The emergence of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) has yielded technologies that have and will continue to revolutionise health care through the use of digital transformative technologies characterised by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), the cloud, big data and mobile data access. The questions that now arises, in the fifth revolution, where we will see a broader integration of AI into health care, will nurses be prepared to navigate this new environment? | HE ALTH C ARE ADVAN CEMENTSToday, the global healthcare ecosystem begs for new processes, models, systems and products that achieve the quadruple aim to better manage not only the populations but to lower cost, and improve patient and clinician experience (Hefner et al., 2021). Industry 4.0 is challenging

The art of nursing in the fourth industrial revolution: Lessons learned

“…Health professional education has incorporated new technologies to prepare practice-ready nurses who will work with advancing technologies in clinical settings. 10 The integration of machine learning and artificial intelligence significantly altered how students learn. 11 Online supplemental aspects of nursing education are used to deliver some contents of the program and provide remote learning opportunities for students.…”

“…Several components of the art of nursing have been described in the literature such as empathy, intuition, and compassion. 10 , 17 Although research shows the effectiveness of the use of technology in patient care, nurses need to embrace these emerging technologies and be prepared to integrate them into patient care and ensure that human care is still at the center of the nursing profession (Buchanan et al., 2020). 5 Pandian et al.…”

“… 5 Pandian et al. 10 emphasized that the value of soft skills should not be overlooked as the interpersonal skills of nurses and compassionate care will have much more applications to patient care compared to any artificial intelligence that lacks human connections and emotions. Nurses are the largest group of health professionals as administrators, educators, practitioners, researchers, and policymakers.…”

“…Are we then endangering our caring profession that encompasses empathy and connections with our patients by being replaced by the advancement of robots with AI technologies? What is needed to maintain the art of nursing in the 4 th industrial revolution are to: (1) consider leveraging the technology to prepare future-ready nurses to thrive in a highly technological healthcare setting without losing the essence of nursing; 10 (2) build strong nursing leadership to drive technological change and ensure the continued delivery of high-quality, person-centered compassionate nursing care; 5 , 12 (3) develop new digital health care model and policy to support the integration of technology into nursing practice; 5 , 18 and (4) involve in designing innovative technological interventions with engineers that is linked to the theory of human caring. 5 , 10 , 18 It is through these and the triadic partnership with the patients, nurses, and technology that we can maintain the art of nursing.…”