Abstract
Introduction: To meet the ambition of the UK becoming the global leader in health technology, the future workforce needs to have a developed digital literacy. The influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the move to online learning has also increased the requirement for a reinvention of traditional teaching methodologies (Sá & Serpa, 2020). Methodology: A systematic review was conducted using a mix of Boolean search terms in twelve education and health journal databases to discover the extent of current international research of digital literacy in health programmes. Papers were selected for their specificity to digital literacy in health education pre-registration professional programmes. Results: The initial search included 5359 papers, 3925 after duplicates removed, 134 remained after title review which were then input into Covidence for full reading, finally 47 papers being included for thematic analysis. This thematic analysis identified a number of key themes within these papers: digital literacy of the educator, digital literate workforce, technical skills limit adoption, information literacy, a curriculum requirement in education, institutional infrastructure or personal access, preparedness for entering academia, concerns over the use of digital skills, personalised digital literacy experience, increased communication skills with digital literacies, competency frameworks, COVID-19 and social media in education. Conclusion: This research identifies areas of good practice and areas that need to be considered in higher education programmes and by academics to ensure the digital literacy of the future healthcare workforce.
Highlights
To meet the ambition of the UK becoming the global leader in health technology, the future workforce needs to have a developed digital literacy
The initial search included 5359 papers, 3925 after duplicates removed, 134 remained after title review which were input into Covidence for full reading, 47 papers being included for thematic analysis. This thematic analysis identified a number of key themes within these papers: digital literacy of the educator, digital literate workforce, technical skills limit adoption, information literacy, a curriculum requirement in education, institutional infrastructure or personal access, preparedness for entering academia, concerns over the use of digital skills, personalised digital literacy experience, increased communication skills with digital literacies, competency frameworks, COVID-19 and social media in education
This research identifies areas of good practice and areas that need to be considered in higher education programmes and by academics to ensure the digital literacy of the future healthcare workforce
Summary
To meet the ambition of the UK becoming the global leader in health technology, the future workforce needs to have a developed digital literacy. This report focused on the changes concerning the digital literacy requirements of the health workforce and makes predictions about the use of technology in health care towards 2040. These predictors require that the digital literacy levels need to increase significantly in the health care workforce prior to 2026. The Department for Health & Social Care (DHSC) have the ambition of the UK becoming the global leader in HealthTech (DHSC, 2018) To achieve this goal the DHSC describe the requirement for digital competence and the need for digital leaders to drive the workforce forward in this goal. For the continued delivery of Matthews / Contemporary Educational Technology, 2021, 13(4), ep317 contemporary care, it is imperative that the health workforce is given the opportunity to learn and develop a digital literacy (Kennedy & Yaldren, 2017)
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