Exploring Nursing Students' Perspectives on Telenursing Using Q-methodology

With the rapid development of information and communications technologies, the medical care paradigm has been transformed, making telenursing a reality. Along with the introduction of telenursing, new changes are anticipated in the following central nursing domains: "human," "environment," "nursing," and "health." Current nursing students living in a hyperconnected world are expected to expand telenursing and foster changes in nursing. Therefore, it is important to understand nursing students' perceptions about telenursing to prepare innovatively for this changing field. This study explored nursing students' subjective perceptions about telenursing in South Korea using Q-methodology. Forty Q-statements, which reflected the nursing metaparadigm, were extracted from 175 generated statements; then, 40 nursing students-recruited purposively through snowball sampling-ranked the set of Q-statements. The data were analyzed using the PQMethod program. Five perceptions concerning telenursing were identified: "concerns and suggestions for telenursing," "complete support for telenursing," "inevitable acceptance of telenursing," "distrust and criticism regarding telenursing," and "optional acceptance of telenursing." This study provides strategies for introducing and implementing telenursing services in countries with commercial 5G coverage and informs policies related to nursing education.