Preface

Joni Tornwall, PhD, RN, Editor

Technology played a pivotal role in our ability as nurses and educators to adapt to sudden disruptions in familiar paradigms during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our agile response was supported in part by innovative approaches to using technology to maintain continuity in academic and professional education, care for patients via telehealth, keep patients connected with their loved ones, and sustain our own mental health and resilience. Many of the rapid changes that we experienced during the pandemic catalyzed innovations and shifts in thinking about the way we will practice and teach nursing in the future and are covered in this issue of Nursing Clinics of North America. They include the following:

• •Active involvement of nurses in policy creation to keep up with rapid changes in how technology affects education and practice
• •Better education related to telehealth as an effective and flexible way to deliver health care
• •Health and wellness apps with social networking features to support patient care, professional development, and resilience of the health care workforce
• •Approaches to disaster preparedness that leverage mobile technology and virtual simulations

Proficiency in the use of technology to support health care processes and positive patient outcomes is an essential nursing competency,¹ and threading technology instruction through nurse education curricula is crucial in the preparation of practice-ready nurses. Throughout this issue, the integral role of technology in education and practice is made apparent through specific examples from the classroom, entry-level nursing contexts, and advanced and specialty practice settings. The authors describe technology-based strategies to engage students in clinical reasoning, teach new nurses working on a med-surg unit to operate medical equipment, and provide practical experience for forensic nurses in completing an electronic death certificate.

Skilled instructional designers and content experts enhance student engagement in nursing education by using technology to facilitate connections to experts, mentors, peers, and instructional resources, which is crucial for students who might otherwise lack educational access and support. Technology makes multimodal approaches to learning possible through multiple types of media and sensory inputs and allows learners to produce observable, measurable responses to assessments that demonstrate knowledge and competency. Case-based stories, educational games, student-driven instruction, peer-to-peer teaching and feedback, and collaborative decision making in ambiguous situations are strategies described in this issue that are readily implemented through thoughtfully selected technology.

Nurse educators in academic and practice settings need to stay up to date in a constantly evolving landscape of learning technologies and know how to mitigate potential barriers, such as cost and access in technology implementation. Investments in technology infrastructure, instructional design experts, and faculty development are critical to maximizing the power of technology in the future of nursing practice and education. This issue of Nursing Clinics of North America is designed to inform decisions by nurses about delivery of patient care and nurse education and inspire them to express their own creativity and innovation by taking advantage of the benefits technology has to offer to education and practice now and in the future.