The healthcare system within the United States is experiencing increasing stress related to issues of access to care, affordability, healthcare provider shortages, rising cost of provision of care, and deteriorating financial milieu of the population in general. Responding to these conditions is forcing healthcare providers to open their practices to new methodologies for delivery of services such as increasing technological accessories to meet patient needs. Successful adoption of new healthcare technologies, requires initial recognition by those needing to adopt change of the need for change, awareness of any benefit inherent in a particular change, and acceptance of the change as a positive experience. Unfortunately, the trend in healthcare has been to implement new methodology or technology without attention to assessing readiness for change. Responsiveness of healthcare providers towards engendering change is thus slowed immensely and many programs to meet patient needs with technology fail early, before full benefit can be recognized. Purpose and Scope: The purpose of this project was to describe the level of knowledge, attitude, perceptions, and behaviors regarding telemedicine among Nurse Practitioners (NP) before and after an educational intervention derived from evidence based studies on telemedicine. The change in attitude and perception resulting from the educational intervention was measured to assess the effectiveness of providing preliminary information to foster telemedicine acceptance and ensuing change in practice patterns. Goal and Objectives: The goal of this project was to assess potential cause for lack of NP utilization of telemedicine. The objective was to increase the pool of NPs recognizing telemedicine as a viable practice adjunct to address healthcare disparities. Plan: Phase One: Formation of Problem-Intervention-Comparison-Outcome (PICO) questions, search for evidence answering PICO question, critically appraise data gathered, identify assessment tools for technology adoption and develop outcome measurement methodology. Phase Two: Develop educational intervention with pre and post-test to be placed on-line in web based format through NP list-serves for self selection of participants. Phase Three: Analyze and disseminate data. Outcomes and Results: Results were strongly positive for improved acceptance of telemedicine after an educational presentation via power point on the benefits of use and responsiveness of the technology to meet current and evolving patient and healthcare needs. Self selection utilizing an on-line format may bias the results in favor of those already comfortable with the use of some technologies.
