Nursing Telehealth Applications Initiative

摘要

Deliverables associated with this project included development and testing of a Cyber Clinical Environment (CCE), encompassing leading-edge telehealth and information technologies for application in civilian and military training settings, outcome analysis of experiments to evaluate the impact of simulator-based education, and evaluation of the effectiveness of technology-delivered reinforcement methods following Diabetes Self-Management Education (DSME) programs. Studies conducted at Mt Aloysius College, Marquette University, and the USUHS Graduate School of Nursing showed that the use of telehealth tools to teach health assessment skills - even to relatively seasoned clinicians - is very useful. Within the GSN, results have led to similar instructional sessions during the 2nd year of the program. A number of simulation studies supported that the advantages of training with a high- fidelity mannequin are more significant for training complex skills rather than basic ones. Another study found that technology-delivered reinforcement following formal self-management education programs seems to require a more tailored and dynamically responsive process that may need to be offered daily rather than weekly or bimonthly. Using telehealth kiosks in community settings, exposure to and use of the telemedicine equipment by senior citizens increased the participants' feelings of self efficacy. The increase in self efficacy observed in this study parallels results observed in an earlier NTAI study of heart failure patients. Overall, this project was successful in outlining best practices in the use of telehealth technologies for training nurses and allied health professionals as well as for application in community-based health promotion and disease prevention programs.