From Hand-On to Hand-Off: Upskilling Care Work in the Case of Virtual Nursing

Wang, Yuchen; Sivanathan, Shariga; Parekh, Harsh; Vollenberg, Carolin

Abstract

Virtual nursing, a novel care model to mitigate the nursing workforce shortage, is increasingly being deployed. While previous literature discussed virtual nursing’s impact on nurses’ skill sets, these studies didn’t bring the task delegation between humans and technology into focal discussion. In this research, we used a grounded theory method to study the virtual nursing model at a public hospital in Singapore, with field observations, interviews, and archival data. We identified two types of task delegation (human delegation and technology delegation) and two dimensions of skills derived from the virtual nursing model (relation bonding and digital versatility). We proposed a process model for nurses to upskill through iterative task delegation, where digital versatility happens at the delegation stage, and relation bonding happens at the task execution stage. We contribute to the virtual nursing literature by highlighting the roles of task delegation and digital artifacts in nurses’ skill change, and provide practical implications for nurses’ training when implementing the virtual nursing model.