Abstract
BackgroundInformation and communication technologies (ICTs) used in the health sector have well-known advantages. They can promote patient-centered healthcare, improve quality of care, and educate health professionals and patients. However, implementation of ICTs remains difficult and involves changes at different levels: patients, healthcare providers, and healthcare organizations. Nurses constitute the largest health provider group of the healthcare workforce. The use of ICTs by nurses can have impacts in their practice. The main objective of this review of systematic reviews is to systematically summarize the best evidence regarding the effects of ICTs on nursing care.Methods/designWe will include all types of reviews that aim to evaluate the influence of ICTs used by nurses on nursing care. We will consider four types of ICTs used by nurses as a way to provide healthcare: management systems, communication systems, information systems, and computerized decision support systems. We will exclude nursing management systems, educational systems, and telephone systems. The following types of comparisons will be carried out: ICT in comparison with usual care/practice, ICT compared to any other ICT, and ICT versus other types of interventions. The primary outcomes will include nurses’ practice environment, nursing processes/scope of nursing practice, nurses’ professional satisfaction as well as nursing sensitive outcomes, such as patient safety, comfort, and quality of life related to care, empowerment, functional status, satisfaction, and patient experience. Secondary outcomes will include satisfaction with ICT from the nurses and patients’ perspective. Reviews published in English, French, or Spanish from 1 January 1995 will be considered. Two reviewers will independently screen the title and abstract of the papers in order to assess their eligibility and extract the following information: characteristics of the population and setting, type of interventions (e.g., type of ICTs and service provided), comparisons, outcomes, and review limitations. Any disagreements will be resolved by discussion and consensus involving the two reviewers or will involve a third review author, if needed.DiscussionThis overview is an interesting starting point from which to compare and contrast findings of separate reviews regarding the positive and negative effects of ICTs on nursing care.Systematic review registrationPROSPERO CRD42014014762.
Highlights
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) used in the health sector have well-known advantages
Subgroup analysis We will categorize the reviews into subgroups, according to the type of intervention and its purpose (ICTs, such as electronic health records used for assessment, webbased intervention for health promotion purposes, etc.), setting, and if possible, the effects on a specific dimension of nursing care. Expected significance of this overview Results of this overview could be used to develop a broad picture of the dimensions of nursing care that have the potential to be supported, enhanced, or constrained by the use of ICTs to provide different kinds of care and service among patients
We can target “different types of outcomes” that can be influenced by nursing care, that can be influenced by nursing care and that have the potential to be affected by ICT applications
Summary
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) used in the health sector have well-known advantages. They can promote patient-centered healthcare, improve quality of care, and educate health professionals and patients. Implementation of ICTs remains difficult and involves changes at different levels: patients, healthcare providers, and healthcare organizations. [1, 4, 5] Despite these well-known advantages, the implementation of ICTs in practice remains difficult and involves changes at different levels, including with respect to patients, healthcare providers, and healthcare organizations [6]. Nurses constitute the largest health provider group of the healthcare workforce [7, 8] and as such represent an important target for the ICT implementation process. Direct care cannot be provided in the traditional way (face-to-face) that nurses are used to [10]
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