Telemedicine in rural care. Part 2: assessing the wider issues

Abstract

Opportunities now exist for nurses to use teleconsultation for the benefit of their patients. A systematic development of this type of nursing role through integration with broader service development would be valuable.

Competencies and skills for remote and rural maternity care: a review of the literature

“…tele/videoconferencing) and use of Internet under the umbrella heading of eHealth. Alternative forms of service provision described in the literature include those employed in New Mexico (Shoup 1995), community health trusts in NZ (Barnett & Barnett 2001) and community nurse–prescribers in rural Scotland (MacDuff et al. 2001).…”

Eleven years of experience with low-bandwidth telemedicine in a nurse-led rural clinic in Scotland

“…The five most common themes were: Costs (in relation to provider and patient); Reductions in waiting time; Reduction in readmission rates; Patient/nurse satisfaction and benefits; Legal issues. Mennie concluded that there were substantial patient care benefits from nurse-led telemedicine, in terms of: Cost reductions (provider savings through telemedicine and patient savings on travel costs); Reduced waiting times; Reduced readmissions; High levels of patient satisfaction. Also, the nurse was able to: Deal with more complex cases; Complete all of the patient's care; Establish and maintain a very positive role with the patient; Experience high morale and job satisfaction; Have opportunities for professional development. A qualitative evaluation of the service in Letham was conducted in 1999. 5–7 Although the doctors involved expressed some reservations about the limited video quality, all three user groups were positive about the service: Patients accepted telemedicine as being a good way to consult their GP. The survey showed that 92% were satisfied or fairly satisfied.…”

Stakeholders’ experience of teledermatology in a nurse-led community clinic: a case study

“…Generally outcome measures found in evaluations of teledermatology services can be divided into three categories: measures of user satisfaction [7][8][9][10][11][12], measures of medical outcome [7,9,[13][14][15][16][17][18] and financial measures [19][20][21]. Few papers looked specifically at the role of nurses in telemedicine [22][23][24][25][26].…”