Topic 5 DQ 2

Technology is always advancing and in the nursing field it can bring about many benefits. Today’s technology can be used for charting, to record nursing trends, collect patient data, schedule, monitor patients, scanning medications, and storing medical health records. All these advances in technology can improve the quality of care provided. A new advance in technology is telehealth or virtual visits. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced rapid innovations in ambulatory care delivery, this includes group visit programs that previously relied on in-clinic appointments (Mirsky & Thorndike, 2021).

Telehealth appointments can improve adherence to breastfeeding in those mothers that find attending a face-to-face appointment hard to keep due to babysitting, distance, or time. Telehealth appointments are a cost-effective, real-time tool that can be done anywhere at any time to educate and support mothers facing breastfeeding challenges. This can definitely be used to increase breastfeeding support, educate and increase the already low breastfeeding rates. Most mothers are young and know how to operate a smartphone so this type of technology would be appropriate if used with my evidence base practice project. Although most mothers may have a smart phone and can operate it well there are still barriers to telehealth visits being effective. One disadvantage is that there are limitations to performing a comprehensive physical assessment that might be needed on both mother and baby to properly assess breastfeeding. Additionally, providers should have awareness of and maintain compliance with state and federal legal requirements while using best practice guidelines to provide patient safety (Gajarawala & Pelkowski, 2021).

During the pandemic, Healthy Beginnings started to do virtual classes and virtual visits by using telehealth appointments. These classes included prenatal classes, childbirth preparation, breastfeeding, newborn care, cesarean preparation, infant safety, and CPR. These virtual classes were great because the mothers could still receive the education and support, they needed. For this reason, breastfeeding support appointments are still available to those mothers who have a difficult time attending an in-person appointment but want to continue breastfeeding.

 Technology is integral to successful implementation in many projects, through either support or integration or both. Name at least one technology that could improve the implementation process and the outcomes of your capstone project change proposal. Do you plan to use this technology? If not, what are the barriers that prevent its use? 

Using 200-300 words APA format with at least two references. Sources must be published within the last 5 years. There should be a mix between research and your reflections. Add critical thinking in the posts along with research. Apply the material in a substantial way.