The potential of telemedicine for home nursing in Queensland.
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Date
2001-08-16
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Abstract
The potential for telemedicine in home nursing was examined by retrospectively reviewing the case notes relating to home visits made by nurses in Queensland The case notes of 166 clients were randomly selected from 10 domiciliary nursing centres run by the Blue Care nursing organization in south east Queensland Two experienced community registered nurses independently undertook a retrospective review of the case notes Each reviewer made an independent judgement as to whether any of the home nursing visits in the episode of care could have been conducted by telemedicine Visits requiring hands on care were deemed to be unsuitable for telemedicine A total of 12 630 home visits were reviewed The median number of visits per client was 27 range 1 722 The mean age of the clients was 72 years range 2 93 years A total of 1521 home visits 12 were judged suitable for telemedicine There was no significant difference in suitability between males 13 and females 12 Care interventions suitable for telemedicine were more likely to be those of a supportive educational or review nature Forty per cent of clients lived up to 5 km from the home nursing centre 33 lived 5 10 km from the centre and 27 lived over 10 km from the centre The results of the present study confirm the potential for telemedicine in home nursing in Australia