Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Sep 24, 2023
Date Accepted: Mar 21, 2024
Healthcare professionals experiences of using information and communication technologies in patient care during the COVID 19 pandemic: a qualitative study.
ABSTRACT
Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic acted as a catalyst for the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in inpatient and outpatient healthcare settings. Digital tools were used to connect patients, families, and providers amid visitor restrictions, while virtual platforms were used to continue care amid COVID-19 lockdowns. What we have yet to learn is the experiences of healthcare providers (HCP) use of ICT that supported changes to clinical care during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Objective:
The aim of this paper was to describe the experiences of HCP in using ICT to support clinical care changes during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper is reporting on a subset of a larger body of data that examined changes to models of care during pandemic.
Methods:
This study used a qualitative, descriptive study design. Thirty HCP were recruited from three hospitals in Canada. One on one semi-structured interviews were conducted between December 2022 and June 2023. Qualitative data were analyzed using an inductive thematic approach to identify themes across participants.
Results:
A total of 30 interviews with HCP revealed three themes related to their experiences using ICT to support changes to clinical care during the COVID-19 pandemic. These included the use of ICT to: i) support in-person communication with patients, ii) facilitate connection between provider to patient and patient to family, and iii) provide continuity of care.
Conclusions:
HCP narratives revealed the benefits of digital tools to support in-person communication between patient and provider, the need for thoughtful consideration for the use of ICT at end-of life care, and the decision-making that is needed when choosing service delivery modality (e.g., virtual or in-person). Moving forward, organizations are encouraged to provide education and training on how to support patient-provider communication, find ways to meet patient and family wishes at end-of life, and continue to give autonomy to healthcare providers in their clinical decision-making regarding service delivery modality.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.