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Healthcare has advanced leaps and bounds. Hand washing, one of the most critical, basic essentials for healthcare settings, has only been around since the 1840s. Modern medicine itself has only had a few decades, with many treatments and diagnostic tools much younger.
When you consider that hygiene protocols in hospitals are only around 130 years old, it’s safe to say that modern medicine has evolved fast. Upgrading a system that is as large, complex, and spread out as the healthcare sector is far from easy.
We are already behind the times, and yet we are on the brink of the next generation of healthcare. Telehealth is going to completely revamp and, hopefully, bring about a huge surge in innovation to healthcare.
After all, healthcare technology goes beyond the tools that are used. The unfortunate truth is that the administrative technology is behind in its times. Doctors and nurses still cannot use their own phones and are still restricted to pagers. While a lot of these issues are, indeed, because of concerns surrounding privacy, having an outdated system is not the solution – further innovation is.
Telehealth is the next generation of healthcare. Combined with essential tools like blockchain technology (which goes beyond digital currencies) and 5G, and a more connected internet system, telehealth is finally ready to take flight.
Even with all the necessary pieces, telehealth would be slow on the uptake if it weren’t for the pandemic. Mass quarantine made telehealth services essential and, with that, the adoption of new protocols. Telehealth enjoyed resounding success during the pandemic and will continue to be more closely adopted in the coming years until it becomes the norm for many.
Telehealth represents a new epoch. With that epoch will come many big changes for those working in the sector. Nurses are and will always be the backbone of healthcare. Understanding how telehealth will change the health sector and how it may end up changing your career is essential to build the best possible future for yourself.
Regardless of whether you dedicate yourself solely within the telehealth framework or continue to work directly with patients in a face-to-face capacity, you need to know how telehealth will impact your options.
Telehealth is a catch-all term that refers to the distribution of various health services digitally. The most important forms of telehealth directly involve patients. Telehealth requires a few conditions to be met. One, for telehealth to be effective, a strong and stable internet connection is essential. With the arrival of satellite internet and 5G, a greater area of patients can be cared for by fewer professionals.
The second condition is for stronger security and privacy measures to be implemented. Though not the norm yet, this is where blockchain comes into play. Blockchain is a very secure encryption system that connects pieces of data to unique identities.
There must also be a demand for telehealth. The good news is that the pandemic has increased the popularity and demand for telehealth services. There was a 154% increase between 2019 and 2020 thanks to the pandemic, and those numbers only increase as it becomes the new normal.
Telehealth is set to help improve accessibility and will be one of the driving tools to decentralize healthcare. Just as it has many implications for the healthcare sector as a whole, it will change nursing as we know it.
At its base level, telehealth makes healthcare more accessible by allowing patients to talk to doctors and nurses remotely to explain their concerns and update their progress. Visual-only diagnostics can be easily managed online, and, in some cases, prescriptions can even be written or renewed depending on their purpose.
More advanced levels of telehealth will require at-home monitoring and diagnostic tools. These will likely be given to those with ongoing or chronic conditions so that healthcare professionals can improve their ability to monitor each patient’s status with less effort.
A key part of what will make telehealth so important is the use of automation. Wearing monitoring tools or taking regular tests at home will be fed to a system that watches out for anomalies or deteriorating conditions. When any pre-set conditions are met, a healthcare professional will be notified, not before. This gives patients greater freedom and confidence and allows healthcare professionals to take on more patients with less effort.
Telehealth allows for more patients to enjoy a higher quality of care for less time and money. It leverages the benefits of automation while also making care more accessible for a larger number of patients.
Telehealth has already changed nursing. There are better clinical and digital education resources for training nurses. In fact, many courses are now offered 100% online, excluding on-campus intensive programs and clinical training.
There are many nursing roles that will be available within telehealth. You can even earn clinical hours in a telehealth setting by working within grief counseling, mental health education for inmates, or psychiatric assessments in the emergency room.
Nurses will be necessary to provide telehealth services to patients. Telehealth will also be key in training the next generation of nurses. You can work directly as a care provider, especially if you hold an APRN qualification, or in a supportive manner.
If you don’t want to work within healthcare, then knowing your work will be essential. The shortage in nursing is most commonly seen in direct care roles. Working within hospitals or clinics is a surefire way to make a difference in someone’s life. As telehealth is a tool rather than a new area of medicine, you can always train and divert your career into remote or telehealth work later on if you choose to. Until then, you have all the existing roles as you are familiar with them and new roles emerging on the horizon.
Regardless of whether you want to work directly within telehealth or not, you will need to prepare your career to adapt as the technology adapts.
Though every nurse needs to adapt their career for a future of telehealth, not every nurse needs to work within telehealth itself. Many nurses are going into nursing technology, and that leaves a gap in qualified RNs and APRNs in hospital and primary care settings.
Regardless of where you go, you will still be providing essential care to those who need it. Nurses are essential at every level and in every department and sector. You can work privately and still be helping make the world a better place.
The question is, therefore, not where you are needed but what suits you better. Pay, working conditions, interests, and more all matter. Just because there is a shortage somewhere does not mean that you are contractually obliged to work there. Work where you feel most comfortable, and you’ll be able to live a better life overall. When you feel fulfilled and can care for your health and wellbeing, you’ll immediately be able to provide a better quality of care for your patients.
Though each day working as a nurse is varied, it can become repetitive. We are a species that, like it or not, thrives on change. We need to keep progressing in order to feel fulfilled. Advancing your career slowly by investing in degrees will allow you to continually adapt your career to suit your ever-changing priorities.
It is also how you open up new pay scales and job opportunities. If you want your nursing career’s future to remain in your hands, then you need to invest in further training. As that training and education continue, a more firm emphasis on telehealth can be expected.
It doesn’t matter if your degree is focused on telehealth. You will always need to continue to train and learn how to use new tools. The arrival of telehealth is only going to speed up the adoption of new administrative technologies that you will need to learn how to use efficiently. A good user interface is, of course, going to be essential for all future technology, but that does not mean that there won’t be a learning curve. Investing in workshops and other learning tools to help you understand better how to use all the new tools in your work is essential for the future of your career.
Telehealth is one of the key tools that will lead the way in decentralizing healthcare. Centralized healthcare means the bulk of resources is centered in a few key areas. Having large hospitals with most of the specialized and everyday care options in cities is not conducive to a healthy society. We need to distribute people more evenly throughout the country, and we owe it to those who live in lower-income areas and rural areas a higher quality of care as standard. Your health should never suffer because you do not live near a city.
What this means for nurses is the chance to take up a thriving career outside of cities. You can enjoy a better quality of life by living somewhere with a lower cost of living while still earning a high wage.
Telehealth does go beyond care. New technology and massive investment into digital education platforms mean that ongoing training and workshops can become the new norm. For the sake of your patients and your career, lifelong learning is essential. You do not want to be left behind when it comes to technological changes and evolution. Lifelong learning makes it easy to keep your skills up to date, especially as we make the transition into telehealth.
To further your career, you need an education option that looks forward. This means that they utilize and even develop improved education methods of their own while teaching the next generation of nurses with telehealth in mind. When it comes to ensuring that your next degree suits you and will benefit your future career the most, you will want to look for these three characteristics:
With such a fast-moving world, long training periods can be a setback. That is why nurses need to use the full power of online education. Wilkes Passan School of Nursing is a great example of a nursing school leveraging all of the available tools and possibilities of online education. Though there will always be in-person training and clinical hours, being able to study and learn the curriculum entirely online is a must. More than that, there needs to be an increasing number of pathways set out to help more nurses fast-track through their education requirements.
Two of the best examples of this are the Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing and the ADN to MSN program that helps ADN-prepared nurses earn their BSN and MSN all at once, saving them seven months and almost $10,000 in costs.
These accelerated routes will help more RNs, and potential nurses transition their careers more efficiently.
All nursing degrees need to be built with real working conditions in mind. As we move towards a universal adoption of telehealth services as the norm, this means telehealth must be a part of the curriculum for future nurses.
Accreditation isn’t everything in other fields. In healthcare, it is essential. Never enroll in a degree if it isn’t accredited by the CCNE at minimum. Without that accreditation, you will not be allowed to take the state exam. It doesn’t matter how innovative it is. Healthcare is highly regulated, and therefore, so too is its education.
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