Critical Care Nurses’ Attitudes about Influences of Technology on Nursing Care

Aims: This paper begins with developing a quantitative instrument to examine the opinions of critical care nurses’ regarding the influences of technology on nursing practice.

Study Design and Methodology: After reviewing related literature, the draft of a 29-items questionnaire was developed. Based on the review of a panel of 3 experts, it was reduced to 23 items because 6 items measured similar criteria. Content validity index (CVI) of this instrument, based on the opinions of another panel of ten experts reached 0.92. Face validity was established via two focused groups of critical care nurses. All of the items were clear, relevant, and simple for these two groups. Principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation resulted two factors which altogether accounted for 52.5% of the total variance. These factors revealed negative and positive aspects of influence of technology on nursing practices. Coronbach’s a coefficient (a= 0.824) Showed acceptable internal consistency for the entire questionnaire and it’s the negative and positive aspects (0.896 and 0.925, respectively). In the next phase of the study, a convenience sample of 200 critical care nurses, in a cross-sectional study, filled the questionnaire.

Results: The mean score for this sample was calculated as 82.21±9.88, indicating this sample of nurses held positive opinions regarding influences of technology on their practice. Younger nurses and those working in intensive care units had significantly higher mean scores in negative subscale compared to others.

Conclusion: Considering the important role of technology in diagnosis, treatment and caring of various health conditions, adequate training of nurses for managing different technological tools and understanding the culture and values of technological care, can help them balance technological and humanized aspects of care, make technological caring more efficient and improve the quality of nursing care.