JMIR Nursing

Ineffective clinical handover has the potential to compromise patient safety and quality of care. Standardizing the handover process is a widely adopted improvement strategy intended to reduce failures of information transfer. By enabling real-time access to patient information, electronic medical records (EMRs) could address communication issues inherent to nursing handover.

The global nursing workforce crisis demands a shift from reactive staffing to strategic workforce optimization through data-driven decision-support systems. This viewpoint paper reflects on the development and attempted implementation of the balanced nursing teams system, a decision-support tool integrating approximately 250 data points—of which roughly 150 are extracted from existing organizational systems (human resources, scheduling, electronic health records, quality registries) through flexible import mechanisms, and the remainder collected through a built-in 360-degree staff survey with automated analysis—across 10 domains to evaluate nursing team balance between capacity, performance, and outcomes. Following crowdfunding by 18 Belgian health care organizations, balanced nursing teams were implemented across 8 diverse settings (home health care, general hospitals, academic centers) between 2019 and 2023. Using the Human-Organization-Technology fit framework, we analyze why evidence-informed, organization-endorsed digital innovations struggle to achieve adoption. Our analysis reveals 3 interdependent barrier categories: technological fragmentation (vendor lock-in, legacy systems, prohibitive integration costs), organizational siloing (Chief Nursing Officers [CNOs] lacking budgetary authority, nursing framed as peripheral to strategic priorities), and managerial hesitance (fear of punitive data use, cognitive overload from staffing crises). These barriers were worsened by the substantial data-integration burden that the system’s breadth imposed on organizations with limited digital maturity. Critically, only one site (ie, a nurse-led home health care organization where leadership held both strategic authority and resource control) achieved sustained implementation. This contrast demonstrates that workforce optimization through data depends not on software maturity alone, but on achieving simultaneous fit across human, organizational, and technological domains. We argue that the persistent marginalization of nursing leadership within hospital governance structures represents the fundamental barrier to digital transformation in nursing workforce management. The urgency paradox is striking: while nursing represents health care organizations’ highest operational cost and most direct patient interface, workforce optimization tools are consistently deprioritized in favor of regulatory compliance systems and billing infrastructure. Bridging this gap requires systemic investment in nursing leadership authority, data interoperability standards, and recognition that data-driven workforce decisions are strategic imperatives rather than operational luxuries.

Understanding current nursing workflows is essential to informing future workforce redesign strategies, including virtual nursing roles. However, granular insights into current nursing workflows over a 24-hour period and across different staff grades are lacking.

The integration of digital health technologies into nursing education in Saudi Arabia requires reliable tools to assess nursing informatics competency and digital technology self-efficacy among students.

The role of nursing informaticians is well-established in countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia, supported by competency frameworks and educational programs that enable nurses to lead technological integration in health care. However, in Spain, this role is not formally recognized, and specialized university training is scarce, creating a significant gap in digital health leadership among nurses.

The integration of robotic systems into nursing practice is increasingly discussed as a potential strategy to alleviate workload and support care processes in response to demographic changes and staffing shortages. However, the acceptance of nursing staff as primary end users remains a critical determinant for successful implementation. Despite technological advances, the practical requirements and perspectives of nursing staff have not been adequately considered in research and development efforts to date.

Nursing informatics is essential for digital health transformation; however, the technology acceptance of undergraduate nursing students in Saudi Arabia remains underexplored.

There is limited evidence on how brief, optional virtual reality (VR) experiences can be used with first-semester nursing students as experiential learning strategies to support understanding of foundational nursing concepts, outside of mandatory coursework or full-scale simulations. Additionally, little is known about students’ and teachers’ perceptions of VR as a low-stakes, supplemental learning strategy introduced early in nursing education. Examining these experiences can provide insight into the pedagogical value and scalability of VR-enhanced learning within the formal nursing curriculum.

Substance use disorders are chronic conditions with significant personal and social consequences. Nursing care plays a key role in outpatient and community-based rehabilitation programs, yet patients’ perspectives on this role remain underexplored.

Wound care is an increasing global challenge, with older adults among those most affected. As populations age, the demand for effective and efficient wound care increases. Over the years, various wound assessment and care techniques have been developed, including digital wound care technology (DWCT), which uses innovative artificial intelligence (AI). Many older adults, especially those living in rural and remote areas, face significant barriers in obtaining timely and effective wound care, leading to poorer health outcomes and increased health care costs related to wound care. These challenges underscore the urgent need to implement wound care models that equitably improve access to care and enhance clinical outcomes, particularly for older adults, to promote healthy aging and age-in-place. Based on evidence from the literature and the initial implementation of a DWCT in 2 community health systems in Ontario, this viewpoint paper encourages clinicians and health care leaders to embrace and expand the implementation of an AI-driven DWCT to address inequities in access to high-quality, timely care. The experiences from these implementations indicate that the use of AI can support clinical decision-making and extend access to care for individuals in rural and remote communities in Canada. By leveraging DWCT powered by AI, health care providers can enhance the accuracy and consistency of wound assessments, improve communication, streamline care processes, and more effectively allocate resources, ultimately aiming to reduce disparities in wound care outcomes.

In the past decade, the use of health technologies, such as telemonitoring, video consultations, and patient portals, has increased. However, it remains unclear how these technologies have influenced nurse-patient communication. Additionally, little is known about the role nurses play in recognizing and supporting limited (digital) health literacy patients.

Global nursing shortages require innovative care delivery models. Virtual nursing is a cutting-edge model being explored.