Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Jun 26, 2019
Date Accepted: Sep 27, 2019
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
The Use of Health Apps by Nurses for Professional Purposes in Catalonia, Spain: an online survey
ABSTRACT
Background:
In the last few years the number of mobile applications (apps) for health professionals has increased exponentially, but there is a lack of knowledge about the professional use and quality perception of these apps among some healthcare professionals such as nurses. For this reason, there is a need to know the real use of health apps among the different health professionals in particular among nurses, as well as their training requirements and perceptions on the matter.
Objective:
To determine what type of health apps nurses are using professionally, to find out the specific training needs of nurses in the use of health apps and to explore nurses' perceptions of the quality of professional health apps.
Methods:
After an initial piloting survey, all registered nurses at the Nursing Association of Barcelona (COIB) were invited to participate in a 34-item online survey. Finally, 1,293 nurses participated in the survey although 52 did not complete the survey properly, omitting both age or gender information and they were excluded from the analysis.
Results:
Around half of (48.3%;600/1,241) the respondents have professional health apps installed on their devices and were included for analysis. The majority of participants in the survey were women (79%; 474/600) and the remainder were men (21%;126/600). The most popular types of apps used and installed among nurses are related to drug information, health calculators and health guidelines. 97% (582/600) of nurses thought that health apps should be certified and 80% (480/600) agreed that the certification process should be carried out by professional or health institutions. 14.5% (87/600) of participants mentioned they were asked by their patients to prescribe a health app and only 6.5% recommend them often. The majority of nurses (81.8%; 354/433) who answered the question about the importance of receiving specific training on using and prescribing health apps, considered it a very relevant issue.
Conclusions:
The use of health apps is not widespread among nurses in Catalonia and they believe that these types of tools should be validated and certified by health or professional institutions. The prescription of health apps in clinical environments is uncommon among nurses. In addition, age is a factor that determines the way nurses use health apps. Finally, among nurses, there is a need for training in using and prescribing health apps for healthcare purposes.
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