Is Technological Competency Considered Caring?

Nursing is seen as a caring profession, with kindness and compassion as some of its core values. In today's society, however, nursing educators are faced with teaching technology alongside nursing process and caring. Technology continues to be invented or improved upon and nurses are expected to stay abreast of new developments and maintain competence in the utilization of these technologic tools. This expectation is held by the nurse’s employers as well as by the patient, who relies upon a knowledgeable and competent nurse to safely care for his or her well-being. Though it has been suggested that the overwhelming nature of the technologic management in patient care diminishes the nurses’ ability to demonstrate caring behavior, strategies can be employed to assist nurses to maintain focus on caring in their practice.

To meet the needs of the rapidly changing healthcare environment, nurse educators must enable nurses to become confident and competent users of technology but must also safeguard that caring is prioritized in all patient interactions. Nursing educators must emphasize that the caring relationship is of critical importance to the nursing profession and ensure that nursing education not consist solely of the training and validation of technical tasks.

In recent years, BSN programs have begun to incorporate a healthcare informatics course into the nursing curriculum. This initiative has been met with some resistance from students, questioning how technological competency translates into caring in the nursing profession. How do educators emphasize competency and technology as being a vital part of the nursing curriculum? This presentation aims to discuss how technological competency is a vital form of caring in the nursing profession. Locsin's Technological Competency as Caring in Nursing model will be discussed. In addition, the course objectives of a healthcare informatics course will be discussed as they correlate to a case example of an ICU nurse.