Nurses' Attitudes Towards E-Learning for E-Health Education

Introduction

This paper is part of a research work for the establishment of an e-learning model /framework for e-health education for under graduate nursing students and graduate nurses in developing countries. The importance of this research lies in maintaining competency in technology driven health care environment and in accomplishing medical registration requirement through the continuous professional development.

Al-Huneiti et al. (2011) conducted analysis for nursing curricula from several countries, to evaluate where nurses trained for the concept of e-health education, their skills of information and communication technology (ICT) and e-health/ e-nursing courses were conducted.

Findings showed that there was no evidence of the introduction of the concept of e-health /e-nursing in any of the curricula studied. Only basic computer fundamental courses were covered. The lack of a systematic education in e-health and e-nursing makes it hard for nurses to support professional practice with information and communication technologies in a formal structure manner. Since the health care information technology landscape is changing so rapidly and health information courses are not routinely included in nursing curriculum, it is mandatory on nursing leaders to foster an environment among the clinical staff to support new and innovative uses of information technology.

The study’s findings show that a plan for promoting and providing education on the benefits and use of e-health processes and applications, as for ICT, is considered to be a paramount. This is principally in agreement with findings of Thinyane et al. (2006) who pointed out that training and infrastructure have the potential to facilitate the implementation of e-services including e-health, Hugenholz et al. (2008) who considered Lack of computer skills as a major barrier to e-health deployment in health care sector, and Harrison, J.P. and Lee, A (2006) who considered the internet as a way to streamline health care administrative costs and improve communication among health care organizations.

The integration of ICT in health care has been slow due to the lack of infrastructure, high cost, computer illiteracy, restrictive telecommunication legislations, the lack of human capacity in the field of e-health and the lack of systematic education in e-health (Jordanova, & Lievens, 2011 & Edirippulige et al, 2008). Moreover, Health literacy has been identified as a public health goal for the 21^st century and a significant challenge facing health care globally (Norman & Skinner, 2007).

Nursing curriculum must be infused with a meaningful e-health contents to ensure that the future nurses are well prepared to work in a technologically driven health care system and to become a part of the clinical mass of health providers and to act as a change agents in e-health initiative (Booth,2006). More importantly, nursing leadership is in a unique position within the health care industry to take the lead in leveraging health information technology to enhance the quality of patient care. The findings support the introduction of an online e-health /e-nursing learning module that should be integrated in nursing curricula for the national nursing institutions; it should also be a prerequisite for registration of general scope nurses.

Since findings of previous literature and authors’ own study suggest that e-learning system is the solution that will establish an educational framework for e-health implementation, it is essential in order to achieve success to assess and evaluate the attitude of the nursing community - who are the end users- towards the possibility of implementing the 'E-learning system' as a solution to educate the nursing community.