Community nurses’ real-world experiences in learning mHealth technologies for service provision: a qualitative study

Mobile health (mHealth) technologies are rapidly evolving and increasingly integrated into contemporary healthcare, including home-based care, demonstrating proven benefits for patient outcomes. However, adoption lags behind these advancements, particularly among frontline providers. A key barrier lies in nurses’ learning processes for mHealth tools, with limited research exploring this—especially in community settings where mHealth enables efficient home care delivery and patient outcomes. This study aims to explore community nurses’ perspectives on learning to use mHealth technologies for home care provision in Hong Kong. Given that the Hospital Authority primarily manages mHealth services and has introduced multiple mobile apps for home-based care, the study reveals the current state of mHealth learning as well as the barriers and facilitators that influence nurses’ learning processes. A qualitative study using the Interpretive Description methodology was conducted. A total of 17 participants from two different health care systems, the Hospital Authority and non-governmental organizations, were interviewed individually. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. The mean community working experience of the participants was 5.29 (SD 1.29) years, and the mean number of years using mHealth applications in the Community Nurse Service (CNS) was 3.88 (SD 1.03) years. Nearly half of the participants worked in non-governmental organizations (8/17, 47%), and the other half worked in the Hospital Authority (9/17, 53%). Four themes emerged from the data analysis. Participants expressed varying motivators (i.e., perceived usefulness, altruism, mHealth publicity, professional self-identity) for learning about mHealth. However, considering the inadequate training support from hospitals and educational institutions, participants mainly relied on self-directed learning about mHealth tools. They cautioned about the absence of clear guidelines for integrating mHealth tools into clinical workflows, which can lead to confusion and inconsistency in integrating mHealth into home care nursing service and hinder effective learning. Participants also tend to learn only certain aspects of mHealth tools rather than utilizing them comprehensively. They emphasized the need for hospitals and educational institutions to provide more training resources. As mHealth adoption accelerates across healthcare, understanding its integration into home-based nursing care, particularly the learning needs of community nurses, is essential. Nurses reported insufficient institutional support for formal training and limited resources for self-directed learning amid rapidly evolving technologies. These findings underscore that the promotion of mHealth must be accompanied by standardized, context-specific guidelines and workflows to enable seamless integration into routine home care and to sustain meaningful use. Not applicable