Digitalisation surely has changed the way we care for patients, manage our services, as well as how we educate and train students and teams. 

It offers end users convenience and efficiency; reduces or even eliminates the need for the maintenance of bulky paperwork; and allows check and balance systems to be put in place to better reduce likelihood of human error among many others. 

On the other hand, the convenience and efficiency it offers may lead to complacency and superficial understanding concepts; easier access to large amount of confidential and sensitive information if security measures are breached; and may hamper the exercise of decision making. 

Within a local clinical setting, a few challenges I have witnessed that may resonate to a number of nurses are the following:

1. difficulty of older patients in adjusting to the use of digital platforms
2. dependence to access to good quality network for an electronic system to work
3. managing staff’s individual training needs
4. screening learners’ written pieces well. 

What does this mean then for us nurses who deliver care directly to patients, lead teams, and mentor/supervise/assess students and junior members of staff?

First is to acknowledge that the extent and depth of digitalisation and now of artificial intelligence in our practice will continue to grow. Let us assess our respective departments on how well we have or we will evaluate our patient demographic to identify potential pitfalls of any new digital initiative, and advocate for a bespoke pathway for those who may have difficulty with it due to social or medical reasons. 

We can also play an active role in reporting incidents, collating feedback from end users, and auditing and studying trends to help implementers. Role modelling and practising excellent information governance measures has become a lot more critical these days as digital networks has now become an avenue for some to compromise services. It is also time to rethink how we can best help universities and other educational institutions ensure student assessment remains truly reflective of their learning, particularly soft skills that are equally important as technical skills but are more difficult to appraise due to their qualitative nature.  

With all the promise that technological innovation brings, it still boils down to the core element of our nursing practice which is to protect patients’safety by fostering critical thinking and maintaining an attitude of caring.