Virtual Nursing: Emergence, Impacts, Risks, and Integration

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of virtual nursing in the healthcare industry. It begins by exploring the factors that have led to the emergence of virtual nursing, including technological advancements and the need to assist healthcare professionals facing shortages. The report then examines the impacts of virtual nursing on healthcare, such as improved patient outcomes, increased patient satisfaction, and enhanced cost-effectiveness. It also delves into the relationship between virtual and conventional nursing, discussing how the concept of care is evolving with the integration of technology. Furthermore, the report identifies and analyzes the risks associated with virtual nursing, particularly concerning data handling and security. The report concludes by emphasizing the need to address these risks to ensure the safe and effective implementation of virtual nursing practices. The research discusses the role of virtual nurses in healthcare and offers insights into how virtual nursing can be integrated with traditional practices.

Running Head: Digital Context
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
The emergence of Virtual Nursing..................................................................................................3
Impacts on healthcare......................................................................................................................5
Relation with conventional nursing.................................................................................................6
Risks in Virtual Nursing..................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10
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Introduction
The healthcare industry is expected to experience a shortage of 1.05 million Registered Nurses
by 2022 (Walia et al., 2017). Virtual Nursing is one of the contemporary AI-based applications
that are being used widely to deliver quality health care services. The virtual nursing is not only
effective for addressing the shortage of professionals but among a certain group of patients, it is
proved effective to offer greater benefits to the patients. Use of virtual nursing is proved effective
to increase adherence to the treatment among HIV patients (Côté et al., 2015). However, because
of the shortage of nursing professionals in next years and for obtaining positive healthcare
outcomes, the virtual nursing applications need to be integrated with the conventional care
practices (Abbott & Shaw, 2016). As the roles and responsibilities of the virtual nurses are
expanding, the concept of traditional nursing is also changing (Abbott & Shaw, 2016).
Therefore, the complexity of the integration process of virtual nursing and traditional nursing
care is also increasing. The current research deals with the analysis of the different aspects
associated with the use of virtual nursing in healthcare and its integration with traditional
practices. The research includes discussion on the factors that led to the emergence of the virtual
nursing applications. The research also includes analysis of the impacts on the healthcare
industry due to the use of virtual nurses. The research also identifies how traditional nursing
practices are being changed due to the use of virtual applications and how both practices can be
integrated together. Finally, the research also includes discussion on the risks due to the use of
virtual nursing.
The emergence of Virtual Nursing
The new healthcare applications emerge due to several factors. The virtual nursing is one of the
latest advancements in the field of healthcare. The current section deals with the analysis of the
different factors that influenceon the emergence of virtual nurses.
Technological advancement:
The technology is used for bringing positive changes in the healthcare industry. The advanced
technological applications are used for several purposes in the healthcare organizations including
the incorporation of evidence-based practices, improving patient outcome, healthcare educations
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and empowering the patients (Melnyk, 2012). The virtual nursing is one such technological
application that leads to patient empowerment and better patient outcomes. The virtual nursing
applications are designed using artificial intelligence (AI). Use of AI is one of the growing trends
in healthcare. The AI-based applications deploy algorithms for processing a large volume of
healthcare data, identifying the key patterns from the data and using the insights for assisting
clinical practices (Jiang et al., 2017). The AI-based applications are also advantageous because
of their learning and self-correcting abilities. The self-correcting features of AI-based
applications enable them to improve the accuracy on basis of the feedback (Jiang et al., 2017).
As the availability of AI-based applications is increasing, the healthcare organizations are also
focusing to utilize these technologies to offer better health outcomes (Dilsizian & Siegel, 2014).
As an effect, the use of virtual nurses in healthcare is also increasing.
Need for assisting healthcare professionals:
The increasing demand for healthcare professionals is one of the key issues experienced by the
global healthcare industry (Aithal & Aithal, 2017; Walia et al., 2017). The accessibility of the
healthcare services is interrupted significantly due to lack of the professionals (Aithal & Aithal,
2017). The task shifting is one of the effective solutions to address the issues associated with the
shortage of healthcare professionals. The task shifting enables healthcare service-providers to
offer quality services tothe patients. Use of advanced technological applications such as virtual
nurse is effective to enable healthcare professionals in task shifting. The task shifting can
increase the availability of alternative healthcare services. The task shifting is also effective for
providing better patient service. Enhancing the cost-effectiveness of healthcare services is one
of the key concerns ofthe healthcare organizations (Aithal & Aithal, 2017). The task shifting
using advanced technology is also necessary for increasing cost-effectiveness of the healthcare
services. The increasing need to make healthcare services more accessible to patients is one of
the key factors that influence the emergence of virtual nurses in the healthcare industry (Walia et
al., 2017). The AI-based applications are not able to replace the human professional completely,
but the attribute of these applications to process a large amount of information and make
decisions can assist the healthcare professionals to execute their tasks to an extent.
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Impacts on healthcare
Currently, the virtual nurses are used to executing tasks such as the collection of patient data,
processing the discharge information from the hospitals and supporting the patients to make
lifestyle changes. The effects of using virtual nurse in healthcare are as follow—
Better patient outcomes:
The AI-based applications can process up-to-date medical information from different sources
and can provide healthcare professionals with that information (Jiang et al., 2017). The
healthcare professionals can make better decisions on basis of the information provided by the
AI-based system. The AI-based systems are also effective to reduce the therapeutic errors.
Finally, the AI-based systems can successfully extract the information from the patients and can
make real-time decisions such as health risk alert and predicting health outcomes. Being an AI-
based application, the virtual nurses are also used widely for communicating with the patients
regarding medical intervention and educating the patients. The use of is especially effective to
increase the compliance of medical intervention related suggestions among the patients who need
long-term care.
Increased patient satisfaction during hospital discharge:
Customer satisfaction is consideredas one of the important determinants of the survival of
healthcare organizations. The healthcare industry is highly competitive and so, providing the
quality services is necessary for the long-term success of the organizations. In the hospitals, the
patient satisfaction is even more important for increasing adherence of patients to the
intervention process and suggestion of the healthcare professionals. Increased satisfaction is also
effective for improving the loyalty of the patients. When the patients are satisfied with the
services available at the hospital, they tend to complaint less. Finally, higher patient satisfaction
is effective for spreading positive word of mouth. Increased satisfaction also enhances the chance
of patient return and referrals which lead to an increase thein profitability.
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Executing the tasks related to the patient discharge from hospitals is another area where the
virtual nurses have been effectively used. During the discharge tasks, the virtual nurses work as
the relational agents. Use of virtual nurse in the hospitals is effective to increase the level of
satisfaction among the patients (Zhou et al., 2014). Use of the virtual nursing agent also helped
the healthcare service providers to develop a trustworthy relationship with the patients. The
patients are found to have preference over the virtual nurses over the human professionals while
getting discharge information (Zhou et al., 2014). The appearance of virtual nurses plays a
crucial role in influencing patient satisfaction. The patient satisfaction increases when they have
similarity with the virtual nurses in terms of appearance (Zhou et al., 2014). Ease of using
healthcare services is another key factor that influences patient satisfaction (Zarei et al., 2015).
The patients indicate that accessing the services from the virtual nurses is easy. As an effect, the
patient satisfaction also increases when the virtual nurses are used to execute the tasks at the time
of discharging patients from the hospital.
The patient satisfaction is also influenced greatly by their expectations regarding the services
(Zarei et al., 2015). As stated by Zarei et al (2015), patient satisfaction andthe service quality is
closely related. The service quality of a healthcare organization can be measured by the cost of
service, quality of delivery method and quality of the interaction. Being an AI-based application,
the virtual nurses can provide accurate information to the patients (Jiang et al., 2017). As an
effect, the quality related demands of the patients are fulfilled easily with help of the virtual
nurses. Therefore, virtual nurses can effectively increase the satisfaction of the patients.
Relation with conventional nursing
Nursing is based on the concept of care. However, the virtual nursing services are based on
extensive use of technology. Therefore, the concept of care in traditional nursing is being
transformed significantly due to the use of virtual nursing. The current section deals with
analysis on the concept of care in traditional nursing. The section also discusses how the virtual
nurses are working as a care agent.
Role of care in traditional nursing:
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The term ‘care’ in traditional nursing indicates the development of a socio-emotional relationship
with the patient (Abbott & Shaw, 2016). The nurses are expected to have a sense of compassion
towards the patients. In other words, the nursing roles are not limited to the physical actions
only. The traditional nursing services are also characterized by the respect towards the patient
and integrity. However, the concept of care, compassion and integrity is closely related to the
concept of morality. The virtual nursing applications are based on advanced technology (Abbott
& Shaw, 2016). So, the virtual nursing assistants are not expected to morality while delivering
nursing services. From this perspectivethe, virtual nursing is highly different fromthe traditional
nursing.
Virtual nurses as Caring Agent:
Nursing professionals need to perform in different roles. Developing the socio-emotional
relationship is not necessary to perform every role. For instance, the nurses may need to collect
and process health-related data from a patient. In such cases, the presence of socio-emotional
relation is not necessary (Abbott & Shaw, 2016). Rather the nurses require possessing particular
skill-sets to gather and process the data. As any socio-emotional relationship is not needed, the
task of data collection can be done using sophisticated virtual nurse, without involving any
human professional.
Although the virtual nurses are incapable of having emotions, with the advancement of the
technology, these applications are being able to show behaviours which can be interpreted as
emotion. For instance, the virtual nurses are showing empathy while asking questions related to
pain or feelings of the patients (Abbott & Shaw, 2016). Finally, the use of human tone during
conversation is adding the human touch among the virtual nurses (Abbott & Shaw, 2016). The
discussion indicates that despite being highly digital-technology driven, the traditional concept of
care is being implemented in the virtual nursing services to align it effectively with the
conventional nursing services.
Risks in Virtual Nursing
Use of technology in healthcare not only increases the ease of use, cost-effectiveness and patient
satisfaction, but extensive use of technology can lead to security breaches of the patient data as
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well (Angst et al., 2017). The threats to data security need to be addressed to increase the use of
virtual nurses in health care. The advancement in information technology not only enhanced
progress in different domains of healthcare, but it also increased the volume of data to be
handled by the healthcare service providers (Zhang et al., 2017). As an effect, managing and
processing the data is being more difficult for the healthcare organizations. Protecting the
confidentiality of the patients as well as maintaining the quality of data is one of the key
concerns of the healthcare organizations. In this section, the risks associated with extensive use
of virtual nurse are identified and discussed.
Difficulties in data handling:
The data in modern healthcare organizations are being collected from different devices at a
shorter span. It is increasing the problems associated with data handling and processing further.
In addition to the large volume, the data in modern healthcare can also be characterized by the
heterogeneous nature and the hidden value (Zhang et al., 2017). The modern healthcare
applications collect data from different devices and also in different formats. Managing the
highly diversified data in a unified format is difficult for modern healthcare applications. In
addition, digital applications inthe healthcare technology require collecting and analyzing data
from different sources such as electronic health records andthe electronic medical records
(Zhang et al., 2017). Being one of the latest digital healthcare applications,the virtual nursing
assistants also need to collect and process heterogeneous data from multiple sources. Therefore,
handling the huge amount of data can be difficult when the virtual nurses are being used in
complex roles.
Risk of data security breaches:
The safe and quality healthcare services are treated with the most important of patients. The
safety and quality of the healthcare services depend significantly on maintaining the privacy of
the patients (Hossain & Muhammad, 2016). So, the success of any application of digital
technology in healthcare is dependent on the extent to which the privacy and confidentiality of
the data are protected (Hossain & Muhammad, 2016). The virtual nursing assistants need to
collect data from the patients and share those with authorized users such as the other healthcare
professionals, pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies. The data, if not protected
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in the right manner, can be hacked during the process of transfer. It can lead to the sharing of
personal data of the patients in the public domain or manipulation of important health data of an
individual. In either case, the patients can experience adverse outcomes and quality of the
healthcare services can be affected severely. So, while using technological applications such as
virtual nurses, the organizations need to incorporate right measures for protecting the data. While
using virtual nursing assistants, it is necessary to protect the data from unauthorized access.
Investing in a data security system is necessary for the protection of data (Angst et al., 2017).
The healthcare organizations also require ensuring that the organizational policies are focused on
promoting safe practices among the healthcare professionals at the time of data handling and
enhancing the security of the data (Angst et al., 2017).
Conclusion
The current review has identified the factors behind the emergence of virtual nursing, its impacts
on healthcare outcomes, the factors associated with integration between the virtual and
traditional nurses and the issues associated with the use of virtual nursing. The review indicates
that different authors have found that use of technology in the healthcare provides better
outcomes (Côté et al., 2015; Frisch et al., 2014; Côté et al., Walia et al., Abbott & Shaw, 2016).
The shortage of professionals in the healthcare industry is another factor behind the emergence
of virtual nurses (Abbott & Shaw, 2016). Due to use of virtual nursing, the healthcare services
became able to provide better outcomes in terms of patients’ compliance to the medical
intervention (Côté et al., McCue et al., 2015). However, the review also identified that the
traditional concept of care in nursing and the development of socio-emotional attachment with
the nursing professionals is changing due to use of virtual nursing assistants (Selman,2011;
Abbott & Shaw, 2016). Finally, extensive use of technologies such as virtual nurses can pose risk
to the patient data security (Walia et al. 2017).
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