Telehealth Essentials for Advanced Practice Nursing

Book excerpt: A timely, practical, and concise resource for advanced practice registered nursing (APRN) students, faculty, and providers, Telehealth Essentials for Advanced Practice Nursing provides readers with an understanding of and tools to embrace the emerging field of telehealth and optimize its application in clinical practice. Telehealth offers a unique solution to many health-care challenges, such as provider shortages, chronic disease management, an aging population, protection from infectious disease, and limited access to care. As telehealth is being incorporated into health care and health care delivery at an ever-increasing rate, APRNs that can navigate the telehealth arena are uniquely positioned to serve as leaders in the health care of the future. Using Telehealth Essentials for Advanced Practice Nursing, readers will learn how to utilize telehealth to provide new and innovative methods of care. Authors Patty A. Schweickert and Carolyn M. Rutledge present a multi-modal approach to telehealth education that layers telehealth onto nurses’ existing knowledge of nursing practice. The text begins with the history and basics of telehealth before moving on to critical content that a provider must understand to maximize its use in the health care arena, covering topics including: Technology used in the early response to infectious diseases such as COVID-19 The process of integrating telehealth in practice Laws, policies, and regulations governing telehealth practice Barriers to implementation and strategies for overcoming them Telehealth etiquette and ethics Using telehealth for effective interprofessional collaboration Each chapter includes group exercises, prompts for reflection, questions for discussion, and case studies. Included with the text are online supplemental materials for faculty use in the classroom. With Telehealth Essentials for Advanced Practice Nursing, APRN students, faculty, and practicing providers will learn to advocate for telehealth implementation, establish telehealth programs, and utilize telehealth to overcome barriers to care in order to optimize access and quality of care.