Nurses’ adoption and use of digital technology during the COVID-19 pandemic

Aim: to explore nurses’ adoption and use of digital technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic Methods: online survey to obtain nurses’ feedback and ratings of technologies implemented and used to support patient care during the COVID-19 pandemic. Survey questions comprised fixed response and free-text questions and a rating of system usability (quantitative and qualitative data). Participants were recruited via nursing networks and social media.
Results: 55 respondents provided details on 85 separate technologies. The majority of technologies were used for patient monitoring/data sharing (n=39; 46%), online communication (n=22; 26%) virtual appointments (n=15; 18%). Other technologies included electronic patient records (n=5, 6%), e-Prescribing (n=3; 3%), and for PPE (n=1, 1%). Usability of systems varied significantly across types of technology.
Barriers to successful use included accessibility to effective infrastructure.
Conclusion: there was a range and breadth of digital technologies adopted and used by nurses during the pandemic. There are ongoing issues with the availability of digital infrastructure to enable effective digital working, and poor usability of some systems that have been implemented.