Telehealth educational interventions in nurse practitioner education: An integrative literature review

BACKGROUND: Telehealth is a solution to combat multiple health care problems such as lack of access, provider shortages, increasing health care expenditures, and a growing number of people living with chronic conditions. Nurse practitioner students are not adequately educated in telehealth and may be unprepared to use it in their future careers. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the efficacy of telehealth educational interventions synthesizing current literature. DATA SOURCES: Using PubMed and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature databases, a search was conducted in October 2019 for peer-reviewed articles in English using search terms "telemedicine," telehealth," "ehealth," "mhealth," and "mobile health," along with "graduate nursing education" and "nursing education." CONCLUSIONS: A total of 15 articles were included for review. Minimal nurse practitioner student education should include didactic content and student projects because of the ease of implementation. When telehealth didactic education is combined with experiential learning such as simulation and clinical experience, the benefit is greater. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: The identified methods for increasing telehealth education should be implemented to prepare nurse practitioner students because telehealth continues to grow and become a vital part of American health care. Telehealth educational resources should be increased, as telehealth is only as useful as providers are prepared to use it.