Testing Telehealth Using Technology, Article Critique Example

Testing Telehealth using Technology- Enhanced Nurse Monitoring

The following article, “Testing Telehealth using Technology- Enhanced Nurse Monitoring” written by Grant, Rockwood, and Steenes discusses how technology has enhanced the ways in which nurses are assessing, diagnosing, and attending to the triage of older adults that live in community-based environments. The primary research question asked by the article is, “How can nurse specialists use telehealth solutions effectively to support chronic disease management among at-risk older adults living in community-based settings?” (Grant, Rockwood, Steens 2014) The technology-enhanced nurse monitoring is thought to be a satisfactory solution for nurses that aid in linking the biometric and non-biometric sensors to systems for data management. Nurses can monitor this data from a remote to a centralized geographical location. Unlike in the past, the move to telehealth options is used on analog or broadband communications in which help to collect, deliver, and provide health information and education at any location.

In order to test out the validity of using the telehealth application in community-based settings, the group conducted partnered study with a research team from the University of Minnesota based on the Living Well @Home program for a period of 35 months in four focus groups. The findings of the study are useful in understanding how organizational processes and systems can improve the impact of technology-enhanced nurse monitoring services from nurse specialists’ perspectives. Overall the conclusions of the study found that while it did improve their monitoring services, there is still a need for better understanding of the deploy method used in implementing support systems to use the technology effectively in community settings. More importantly there are organizational and financial barriers that prevent widespread adoption in which could help in supporting telehealth solutions.

The authors provided a well-formatted and well-researched topic in the nursing community. The movement to technology enhanced systems that work on wireless networks is proving to be useful in community-based settings that needing to monitor patients with chronic illnesses. The authors partnered with a larger study conducted by the University of Minnesota in providing four focus groups with the technology. In providing useful background and grounded information on telehealth applications in the health industry, the authors were not only able to inform their audience on its importance and prevalence in the nursing community, but also provide a good transition to the primary research question, and purpose of the article. In documenting their study, the methodology implemented was a qualitative study in which nurses responses were calculated by themes presented by the authors. The use of this methodology was to gauge the nurses’ responses to using the technology overtime. While the study did present some limitations that included the use of one coder for categorizing responses and the barriers presented by the nurse specialists in transferring the data recorded from the data management system into information. It still presented an informative research for the field of gerontology.

Telehealth technology provides two solutions for nurses that include, the traditional telehealth application utilized in clinical settings to improve the clinical process through the biometrics parameters used with remote assessment. The innovative use being used to monitor the health status for patients that are at high risk from chronic medical conditions. They are used increasingly outside of clinical settings for early detection and assessing client risks. In relation to gerontology, it has become an increasingly researched field in which is seen as an effective and efficient method of systematically providing integrated care in the community settings. The authors have contributed to the field of gerontology and the support for telehealth systems for better patient care for older adults, and nurse work with chronic disease management.

References

Grant, Leslie A., Rockwood, Todd, Stennes, Leif. (2014). Testing Telehealth Using Technology-Enhanced Nurse Monitoring. Journal of Gerontological Nursing. Vol 40, No. 10.