Home health nurses' initial experiences with wireless, pen-based computing.

Abstract

Eight home health nurses from the Visiting Nurse Service of New York participated in a focus group discussion after their initial experiences using wireless, pen-based computing in the inner-city, home care environment. Transcripts of the nurses' responses to open-ended questions were analyzed and central themes were found, following the method of concept analysis described by Strauss and Corbin (1990). The central concepts were "Readiness," "A thousand pounds on my back," "Call for support," "Problems with transmission," "Using the computer as an assistant," "Nurses discovered glitches," and "Everybody has to have a computer." These themes reflected the nurses' initial experiences with the wireless computers and also revealed their concerns. This article will describe these themes and will discuss the implications of current improvements in wireless computing for health care. The focus group themes aided in understanding how this group of experienced home health nurses began to transition from handwriting on several different forms to checking-off items on a small, hand-held computer screen, from innovating methods to communicate when telephones were not available, to using a wireless computer to send and receive data involved in the patient admission process