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Video Conferencing after Discharge from Hospital Providing video conferencing after a mother and newborn are discharged from the hospital has been found to be very beneficial in many regards. In most cases with an uncomplicated labour and a healthy newborn, mothers and newborns spend just two days in the hospital. New questions and concerns may arise once the mother and her infant are home. Questions or concerns about breast feeding, umbilical cord care, neonatal jaundice, and other concerns related to the care of the newborn can be answered by the nurses, using this form of communication technology (Lindberg, Christenssen & Orhling, 2009). In a study examining parental communication during NICU hospitalization, it was found that 25% of the participants of the study believed that they could not ask a lot of questions, and 29% felt they did not have the privacy in the NICU which did not allow them to ask questions (Johnson, 2008). Videoconferencing can be used to give patients twenty four hour access to the same health care team which cared for them. This allows for a continuum of care, without having to leave the comfort of the home, and maintain privacy (Lindberg et al., 2009). Therefore, video conferencing technology is an asset even after the patient has finished their short stay in the hospital. The equipment, including a camera and a microphone would be installed in the family’s home. From there, they would be able to log into the internet site using an application that would be secured with a password to maintain patient privacy. Research shows that using this method of communication technology in home care has significantly increased the satisfaction of families by meeting their emotional and educational needs (Davis et al., 2000). The study featuring a program called “Baby Care Link”, which connected parents at home to a virtual nursery and allowed them to view their infant in the NICU, read the daily report, prepare for discharge, start teleconferencing, and gain clinical information. The team involved in the creation included: neonatologists, nurse practitioners, social workers, nurses, respiratory therapists and software engineers. There were 176 infants in the study who all were of low birth weight. The results showed higher scores in the study group who used the program in the area of satisfaction. They were 85% less likely to report issues during the length of their baby’s stay in the hospital (Davis et al.). Discussion & Conclusion With regard to technology and nursing, it is essential for nurses to ensure that patient privacy is maintained. Any system containing information about a patient must be completely secure. This could be a concern if the network each party is using to access the data became unsecured. As nursing professionals, we must ensure the communication technology is ethical, and adheres to the rights of the patient. More research studies regarding this topic are needed to help facilitate technological advancements in this direction. By searching for evidence-based information using the following nursing databases: CINAHL - Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Nursing & Allied Health Source, Cochrane Database of Systemic Reviews, and OVID, it was discovered that there is a need for more nursing research on this topic. The author used the following keywords and Boolean phrases: “Video conferencing”, “NICU”, “Parental confidence”, “Nursing informatics”, “Telehealth”, “Teleconferencing”, “Electronic health”, “Nursing technology”, “Obstetrics”, “Post Partum technology”, “Hospital discharge”, “Stress and NICU” and “Communication technology”. Perhaps more research would lead to a more global integration of technology used by nurses in Family Birthing Centers, other areas of the hospital, as well as remote areas that do not have easy access to health care. The home use of video conferencing may be beneficial to families who have children with chronic health issues such as a congenital heart defect (Grant et al, 2007). Research questions for future studies that are suggested include: Is video conferencing cost effective to the health care system? Does video conferencing maintain patient privacy and confidentiality? Can electronic educational initiatives improve health outcomes after discharge? Is video conferencing more beneficial than telehealth? Some research regarding these topics were discovered through the literature search, however since this article focused on benefits to the patient’s and not the health care system as a whole, they were not included in the article. If the data continues to show that this kind of technology will be useful in today’s health care system, nurses must advocate for this best practice. Educating and empowering families through the use of technology could possibly be one more way for nurses to provide quality health care (Registered Nurses’ Association, 2009). References Basbakkal, Z., Turan, T., & Ozbek, S. (2008). Effect of nursing interventions on stressors of parents of premature infants in neonatal intensive care unit. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 17, 2856-2866. Canadian Nursing Informatics Association. (2010). Canadian Journal of Nursing Informatics. Retrieved from http://cnia.ca/journal/journal.html. Davis, R., Gray, J., & Safran, C. (2000). Baby Carelink: Using the internet and telemedicine to improve care for high-risk infants. Journal of Pediatrics, 106(6), 1318-1324. Franklin, C. (2006). The neonatal nurse’s role in parental attachment in the NICU. Critical Care Nurses Quarterly, 29(1), 81-85. Grant, B., McCrossan, B., & Morgan, G. (2007). Assisting the transition from hospital to home for children with congenital heart disease by telemedicine: A feasible study and initial results. Healthcare Commuting. 65-73. Johnson, A. (2008). Promoting maternal confidence in the NICU. Journal of Pediatric Health care, 22(4), 254-257. Kaminsky, E., Holmstrom, I., & Rosenqvist, U. (2008). Telenurses’ understanding of work: detective or educator? Journal of Advanced Nursing, 65(2), 382-390. Lindberg, I., Christenssen, K., & Orhling, K. (2009). Parents’ experiences of using videoconferencing as a support in early discharge after childbirth. Midwifery, 25(1), 357- 363. Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario. (2009). E-Health for Every Nurse. Retrieved from http://www.rnao.org/ehealth/june09/index.htm. Bibliography American Psychological Association. (2009). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Canadian Nursing Informatics Association. (2010). Canadian Journal of Nursing Informatics. Retrieved from http://cnia.ca/journal/journal.html. Dexter, P. (2000). Tips for scholarly writing in nursing. Journal of Professional Nursing, 16(1), 6-12. E-Health Ontario. (2010). Ontario’s E-Health Strategy. Retrieved from http://www.ehealthontario.on.ca/about/strategy.asp. Polit, D. & Tatano Beck, C. (2006). Essentials of Nursing Research. Methods, Appraisal, and Utilization. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Telehomecare. (2006). The East York Telehomecare Project. Retrieved from http://www.telehomecare.ca/ehealth.html.
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