Clinical leads have told nurses have to be proactive and to give feedback to Connecting for Health otherwise they risk being left behind.
Delegates at the first NHS Connecting for Health Nursing and Midwifery conference this week in London were told that they must get actively involved in the programme.
Barbara Stuttle, clinical lead for community nursing, told delegates: "I do believe that technology is here to stay. We have to embrace it, we either influence it or it will be done to us."
”Nurses are the glue that holds the health service together. Let’s stick together and influence what happens. This is not about machines doing our job for us. This is about using our expert knowledge and skills, with technology to help us.”
"We need to be more proactive. We need to be revolutionary. Let’s work as glue does, stick together and move this on."
Stuttle said that she hoped that the 400 people attending the conference would leave as ‘champions’ and help spread the word among their nursing colleagues that urgent action was needed.
In a press conference after the keynote speech, Stuttle said that the conference was the "beginning of a journey". "We need to get nurses more and more under the table to start to influence the software that we need. We are happy to assist. What I am very committed to is about getting the information forward." Nurses could contact the leads directly by email with comments.
Becky Rubin, head of the nursing development programme at NHS CfH, said that nurses risked ending up with systems that did not take account of their workflow if they did not get involved. "It’s very critical that we are involved from a clinical perspective. If we don’t specify what we need as professionals we will end up with systems that don’t fit our needs as professionals."
Nurses were the "tipping point" that would decide whether the systems installed in hospitals would be worthwhile, said Rubin. "We need now to recognise and realise the benefits. It’s pointless putting anything in that says ‘This is what it’s going to do and this is how it’s going to do it’, if at the end of the day it does nothing for us."
On the question of IT training for nurses, Rubin told journalists that people will have to be flexible to develop their education and training and that it was recognised that there were training implications. Young people entering the nursing profession were already more likely to be au fait with technology, said Stuttle.
Professor Christine Beasley, who also announced that nurses were to be registered on the NHS webmail service Contact, said: "We are not just going to be able to deliver the healthcare and support we need to in the 21st century unless CfH becomes a breakthrough and not a barrier."