Virtual care and the impact of COVID‐19 on nursing: A single centre evaluation
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
Aims
The overall aim of this evaluation was to look at the impact of the changes in working practices during the pandemic on nurses. This secondary analysis provided an evaluation of virtual care and being able/required to work from home.
Design
This was secondary analysis of an evaluation using semi‐structured interviews.
Methods
Conducted at a single National Health Service (NHS) university hospital in the United Kingdom between May and July 2020. Forty‐eight operational leads and nurses participated in semi‐structured interviews which were digitally recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using a framework analysis.
Results
Two overarching themes emerged relating to the patient experience and nursing experience. There were both positive and negative elements associated with virtual care and remote working related to these themes. However, the majority of nurses found that virtual clinics were useful when proper resources were provided, and managerial strategies were put in place to support them. Participants felt that virtual care could benefit many but not all patient groups moving forward, and that flexibility around working from home would be desirable in the future.
Conclusion
Virtual care and remote working were implemented to accommodate the restrictions imposed because of the pandemic. The benefits of these changes to nurses and patients support these being business as usual. However, clear policies are needed to ensure that nurses feel supported when working remotely and there are robust assessments in place to ensure virtual care is provided to patients who have access to the necessary technology.
Impact
This was a study of the move to virtual care and remote working during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Telemedicine and flexible working were not common in the NHS prior to the pandemic but the current evaluation supports the role out of these as standard care with policies in place to ensure that nurses and patients are appropriately supported.
Article activity feed
-
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.06.03.21258276: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Limitations: The current evaluation has a number of limitations. First, this was secondary analysis of a wider evaluation; therefore virtual care and remote working were not the sole focus of the interviews. Interviews specific in this area may have …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.06.03.21258276: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Limitations: The current evaluation has a number of limitations. First, this was secondary analysis of a wider evaluation; therefore virtual care and remote working were not the sole focus of the interviews. Interviews specific in this area may have included additional probing questions on the barriers and challenges specific to this. Despite this, these themes emerged organically during the interviews, and were explored by the interviewer due its apparent impact on nurse’s experiences during COVID-19. The wide scale and in-depth discussion of these themes warranted the authoring of this paper, rather than it being a subtheme in a larger evaluation. Second, this was a single centre evaluation and reflected the practices and decisions made in this one organisation. However, as a large inner city university hospital, the results may resonate with other organisations. Thirdly, only nursing staff were interviewed, so it does not reflect other professional groups who were using virtual care, e.g. medics and allied health professionals, or a large number of administrative and clerical staff who were required to work from home. It is important that their experience and perceptions are elicited to inform any future policy/guidance. Finally, while we present patient experience, this is through the perception of nurses. To fully capture the experience of those utilising healthcare during the pandemic it would be necessary to engage patients on how they found the experience of interacti...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
-
