Currently submitted to: JMIR Nursing
Date Submitted: Oct 7, 2026
Open Peer Review Period: Oct 12, 2026 - Dec 7, 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Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
The Clinical Gaze in the Digital Age: A Scoping Review Exploring how Nurses Integrate Digital Tools into Person-Centred Care
ABSTRACT
Background:
The rapid integration of digital health technologies, artificial intelligence, and electronic documentation systems is fundamentally transforming contemporary nursing practice and nurse-patient interactions. While these innovations offer data-driven insights and workflow efficiencies, they introduce physical, cognitive, and relational barriers that can challenge compassionate, person-centered care. Analyzing how nurses navigate these technology-enabled workspaces is essential to understanding how human connection and presence are preserved in digitized healthcare environments.
Objective:
To map and synthesize literature on the processes nurses use to integrate digital health technologies into person-centred, compassionate care.
Methods:
Following JBI methodology, 2 independent reviewers screened articles to assess for eligibility via Covidence. Inclusion criteria was defined as Population: practicing nurses, Concept: integration of digital health technologies, Context: person-centred care environments. CINAHL (EBSCOhost), Embase (OVID), and MEDLINE (OVID) were searched May 29, 2026 for empirical, theoretical, and philosophical literature published between 2021 and 2026. This review adhered to relevant EQUATOR guidelines and followed the JBI method for scoping reviews and the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews) reporting guidelines.
Results:
Of 6433 articles identified, 49 sources were included. Findings mapped onto three domains: how the literature defines tension and synergy between technology and caring, the relational, cognitive, and moral processes nurses use to integrate the two, and epistemological and decision-making shifts, including a convergence of independently coined terms describing similar adaptations to remote and virtual assessments.
Conclusions:
Nurses actively negotiate, rather than passively adopt, the integration of digital tools into person-centred care, drawing on relational, cognitive, and moral processes simultaneously. No existing framework yet integrates all three dimensions into a single account.
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