The Importance of Mobile Augmented Reality in Online Nursing Education

Background

International Council of Nursing (ICN) (2006) stated that there is a link between the size of qualified nurses and health services to the community. There are the evidences on the increase of supply and demand imbalances of nurses, and major differences in nurse ratio in the world. ICN (2006) noted that the demands for both low and high- income countries have not been met.

In the United States, there are 140 thousand nurse shortages. It is expected to be 800 thousand nurses until 2020. According to the data of the World Health Organization, in 57 countries, it remains per thousand less than 2-3% nurse, midwife, and doctor. This ratio shows that some people in the world cannot receive even basic health care (Callister, 2012). According to Turkish Statistical Institute, there is only one nurse for every 549 people (TUIK, 2013). This number is very important to think situation of the healthcare services in Turkey.

Changes in the healthcare system, increasing number of the aware patients, and increase in the health care costs has also affected the nursing education. The focus is on specialized content knowledge and skills to prevent medical errors and ensure patient safety. On the other hand, nurses are expected to have high-level skills in working environments. These skills are access, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. In this context, due to the increasing complex and vast amount of new data, nurse students have to know the ways of access to information. Thus, educators should pursue advances in technology and adopt effective teaching strategies to provide more effective learning. New tools are being developed to assist educators and nurse students to keep pace with the growing amount of new information. The work of educators is increasingly difficult. They have to gain students critical thinking and complex problem solving skills in many areas. In this context, in nursing education, technology can assist them to manage these expectations and make future health practitioners successful in their field (Ducut & Fontelo, 2008).