Nursing students’ attitudes towards the use of digital technology in the healthcare of older adults- a cross-sectional study in Norway and SwedenShow others and affiliations
2023 (English)In: BMC Nursing, E-ISSN 1472-6955, Vol. 22, no 1, article id 428
Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Background
Implementation of digital technology has been suggested as a potential solution to future healthcare challenges. Healthcare personnel’s attitudes are important in the acceptance and implementation of digital technologies.
Aim
The aims of this study were to (1) translate and validate two different questionnaires to Norwegian and Swedish respectively, and then (2) use these to examine nursing students’ attitudes towards digital technology in healthcare, as well as their attitudes towards older adults’ abilities to use digital technology.
Design
Cross-sectional.
Methods
A web-based questionnaire was distributed in first year nursing students in a Norwegian and a Swedish university college, respectively. The questionnaire consisted of the short form of the ‘Information Technology Attitude Scales for Health (ITASH)’ and the ‘Attitudes Towards Older Adults Using Digital technology (ATOAUT-11)’ questionnaire. The questionnaires were translated and validated in both countries. Frequencies, Student’s t-test, and one-way ANOVA were used to analyze the data.
Results
In total 236 students responded to the questionnaire in the period September 2022 to April 2023. Students mainly reported positive attitudes towards digital technology use in general. They most agreed with the items ‘Using digital technology devices makes my communication with other health professionals faster’, ‘The sort of information I can get from the digital technology devices helps me give better care to patient’, and ‘Digital technology skills are becoming more and more necessary for healthcare professionals’. However, they reported more negative attitudes towards older adults using digital technology. They most agreed with the items ‘One needs a lot of patience to explain to an older adult how to use digital technologies’, ‘It’s hard to explain to older adults how to use digital technology’, ‘Using digital technology is harder for most older adults’, and ‘Most older adults fear using digital technology because they fear of being scammed or cheated’.
Conclusion
The ITASH and the ATOAUT-11 is appropriate for use in a Norwegian and Swedish setting. Even if nursing students are positive to digital technology in healthcare in general, they are sceptical to older adults using digital technology. This may impact on their attitudes to using digital technology in the healthcare of older adults. These aspects need emphasis when revising nursing education curricula focusing on developing technological competencies in nursing, and gaining knowledge regarding older adults’ use of digital technology.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
BioMed Central (BMC), 2023. Vol. 22, no 1, article id 428
National Category
Nursing Information Systems, Social aspects Educational Sciences Didactics
Research subject
Wellbeing in long-term health problems (WeLHP); Research on Citizen Centered Health, University of Skövde (Reacch US)
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:his:diva-23377DOI: 10.1186/s12912-023-01600-6ISI: 001105001700001PubMedID: 37964266Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85176395709OAI: oai:DiVA.org:his-23377DiVA, id: diva2:1813748
Funder
University of Skövde
Note
CC BY 4.0
© The Author(s) 2023. 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://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
© 2023 BioMed Central Ltd unless otherwise stated. Part of Springer Nature.
Correspondence: Ann-Chatrin Linqvist Leonardsen ann.c.leonardsen@hiof.no
The study was funded by strategic fundings from Østfold University College, and by University of Skövde. The funding bodies did not take part in planning or conduction of the study, or in writing of the article.
2023-11-212023-11-212025-02-18Bibliographically approved