Currently submitted to: JMIR Nursing
Date Submitted: Oct 5, 2026
Open Peer Review Period: Oct 6, 2026 - Dec 1, 2026
(currently open for review)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Implementing nurse-led digital health navigation in clinical practice: A qualitative study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Digital health technologies are increasingly integrated into healthcare, creating new responsibilities for nurses and extending the scope of nursing practice. However, little is known about how nurses implement digital health navigation and integrate these emerging responsibilities into routine care.
Objective:
To explore how nurses experience and implement digital health navigation in clinical practice, including the activities and strategies involved and the integration of emerging navigation responsibilities into routine nursing care.
Methods:
A descriptive qualitative study was conducted at a tertiary hospital in Shanghai, China. Thirteen nurses with experience in supporting patients using digital health technologies participated in semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis.
Results:
Five interrelated themes were identified: identifying navigation needs, initiating digital engagement, enabling digital health use, providing data-informed guidance and ongoing support, and integrating into routine nursing practice. Nurses’ navigation extended from assessing and facilitating patients’ digital health use to interpreting digital health information and providing individualized ongoing support. Integrating these emerging responsibilities into routine nursing practice required workflow adaptation and organizational and interdisciplinary support.
Conclusions:
Nurse-led digital health navigation extends beyond technology support to encompass data-informed guidance, ongoing individualized support, and integration of emerging navigation responsibilities into routine nursing practice. These findings provide a practice-oriented framework for informing the development and implementation of nurse-led digital health navigation.
Citation
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