An evaluation of registered nurses’ experiences of person-centered care and competence after participating in a course in digital competence in care

(2022) 21:368 Carlsson et al. BMC Nursing https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-022-01151-2 Open Access RESEARCH An evaluation of registered nurses’ experiences of person‑centered care and competence after participating in a course in digital competence in care Malin Carlsson, Annika Kjällman Alm and Malin Holmström Rising*    Abstract Background: Health care’s rapid transition from in-person visits to more digital care meetings has challenged nurses to find new, sustainable ways of using digital technology. Methods: The aim was to describe registered nurses’(RN) experiences with person-centred care (PCC) and competence after participating in a course in Digital Competence in Care (DCC). In this study, a qualitative descriptive design was used, and 16 individual interviews were carried out with RNs. Data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The COREQ checklist was used in this study. Results: The results were presented in four categories: being open to change and new ways of working with patients; struggling to handle requirements; developing new ways of working and focusing on patients despite the distance. Conclusions: The DCC course helped develop RNs’ skills and practice of PCC in digital care meetings. Training in digital care theory increased RNs’ competence and facilitated the creation of new knowledge. The RNs’ professional role was strengthened by participating in the changing of work routines. Digital care meetings were shown to be distance bridging and complementary to physical care meetings contributing to PCC. The increased availability of health care via digital means has affected the consumption of care and tailored education needs for RNs must be met by nursing education programs. Digital care is accessible, efficient and enables care regardless of geographical conditions, its innovative development needs to be based on science and experience and RNs are key personnel in this process. Trial registration: Not applicable. Keywords: Competence, Digital care, Person-centred care, Qualitative content analysis, Registered nurses Background Health care is a knowledge-intensive sector currently experiencing a paradigm shift with a change from physical, in-person care to more long-distance care via digital technology. The country’s growing and ageing population *Correspondence: Department of Health Sciences, Mid Sweden University, Holmgatan 10, Sundsvall 852 33, Sweden and its diminishing financial and human resources have created gaps between what is available and what is needed [1]. In response, groups in Sweden have called for health care reform, with the inclusion of PCC as one of the core competences in health care [2]. The reform also includes more digital services in health care [3, 4]. Likewise, the Swedish government’s vision of the digitalisation of health care [5] expects that by 2025, Sweden will offer high-quality, equitable health care and welfare © The Author(s) 2022. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativeco mmons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. Carlsson et al. BMC Nursing (2022) 21:368 services and be established as a world leader in eHealth— that is, a modernised form of health care delivered digitally [4, 6]. According to the World Health Organization [7], the importance of eHealth will only increase with time, especially as digital technology is increasingly used to treat patients, conduct research and education, track diseases, and monitor public health. One component of eHealth known as digital care meetings involves digital contact between patients and health care professionals via video meetings [8]. With the same goals as physical visits, digital care meetings facilitate patient–professional communication by using imaging technology that allows the participants to see and talk to each other in real time. In that process, digital competence is needed and will strengthens a person’s ability to interact with others digitally in consideration of everyone’s opportunities, rights, and obligations [9]. RNs should not only be digital competent themselves, but they should also contribute to developing the digital management of information while providing secure, high-quality digital care but also work in person-centred ways and strengthen patients’ digital competence [10– 12]. This means that RNs’ need to adapt their work processes in digital care meetings to establish relationships with patients and promote patients’ participation in the care in order to work in person-centred ways [13, 14]. To be sure, as digital technology has continued to alter approaches to working, the need to acquire and assimilate new skills has arisen [15]. To keep up with the tide of eHealth, RNs need to be flexible, patient, and capable of handling technical changes and challenges [16]. They also need to be able to combine traditional clinical approaches with new digital approaches [15]. Health care’s rapid transition from in-person visits to more digital care meetings has challenged RNs to find new, sustainable ways of using digital technology. To date, studies have overwhelmingly focused on the technical aspects of eHealth, meaning that more information from RNs’ perspectives is needed for a deeper understanding of their competence needs. Aim Therefore, the aim of this study was to describe RNs experiences with PCC and competence after participating in a course in DCC. Methods Design A qualitative descriptive design with an inductive approach was chosen to gain a deeper understanding of RNs’ experiences with PCC and competence in digital care meetings after participating in a DCC course [17]. The COnsolidated criteria for REporting Qualitative Page 2 of 11 research (COREQ) checklist (Appendix S1) were followed in the study [18]. Context The study was performed in primary healthcare in a region in central Sweden. This region has a population of 245,000 inhabitants [19] and contains both rural and urban areas. Procedure An online course, DCC was developed in collaboration with RNs (...truncated)