Reflection on Using Technology to Deliver Patient Care

Assignment Brief

USE GIBBS REFLECTING TOOLS:

Focus: Using technology to deliver patient care.

Learning Outcome: To explore benefits and challenges of using digital platforms to interact with patients.

Task: In pairs or small groups, use a digital platform to role play different patient scenarios. Take it in turns to be ‘the nurse’ and ‘the patient’. After the role play, reflect together on both roles and consider the following:

Hearing from other people’s perspectives is a crucial part of reflecting, so please give your group members feedback following the roleplay.

Patient Scenarios:

On Blackboard, there are a range of patient scenarios to choose with instructions for each part. Use a different scenario for each role play within your group. Once your group have decided which scenarios to use, spend 30 minutes independently beforehand to prepare. You can expand on the situations drawing on your own experience. The advice that you give as the nurse does not have to be clinically correct, the learning here is about interacting over digital platforms.

Presentation; You can write notes, add images, upload files and record directly to the Padlet. Please include the following:

SCENARIO 1. (I AM ACTING AS A PATIENT PLS REFELCT ON THIS)

This scenario takes place between a Practice Nurse and a patient who has been monitoring their own blood pressure at home. The consultation takes place over the phone.

Decide if you will be the nurse or the patient and read through your notes to prepare for the role play

Practice Nurse

It is 2pm and you are reviewing patients who are monitoring their blood pressure at home. You have seen the results which come in automatically on the system. You will use the call to the patient to review:

• What the blood pressure readings have been over the last month
• How the patient has been managing with the blood pressure device
• How the patient is feeling in general

Patient

It is 2pm and you have been woken up from an afternoon sleep by the telephone. You were expecting the call in the morning as the nurse usually calls before lunch. This is the only contact with someone that you are expecting this week other than the shopping being delivered by a volunteer. Your hearing is impaired and you have recently lost one of your hearing aids. Your blood pressure has been stable, and the device seems to be working well. You have not been eating much as you used to go to the day centre for lunch and think that you may have lost weight, but you do not have scales at home.

Virtual Practice Learning Placement Experience Project

SCENARIO 2: (I AM ACTING AS A NURSE HERE PLS REFLECT ON THIS)

This scenario is a pre-assessment between a nurse working in the Surgical Assessment Unit and a patient who is due to have spinal surgery for chronic back pain. The consultation takes place using a video call.

Decide if you will be the nurse or the patient and read through your notes to prepare for the role play. ( I ACTED AS A NURSE)

Surgical Assessment Unit Nurse

You are completing the pre-assessments for the surgical lists taking place next week. The next appointment will be a video call and you are running 45 mins late. The aim of the pre-assessment is:

• To give information about what will happen on the day
• To check that the patient is currently well
• To answer any additional questions

Patient

You are waiting for your video call pre-assessment appointment. You are working at home and had scheduled your day around the appointment. However, the appointment is late and you have a work meeting starting in 10 minutes. Other than the back pain, you have been feeling well and are keen to have the surgery. You are not sure what to expect after the surgery and what kind of support you may need.

Sample Answer

Reflection on Using Technology to Deliver Patient Care

The integration of digital platforms into healthcare delivery has become increasingly significant, offering both opportunities and challenges for patients and professionals. To explore this, I participated in two role-play scenarios: the first in the role of a patient receiving a telephone consultation with a practice nurse regarding home blood pressure monitoring, and the second as a nurse conducting a video-call pre-assessment with a surgical patient. In this essay, I reflect on these experiences using Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle (1988), which provides a structured framework for considering description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, and an action plan.

Scenario One: Acting as a Patient in a Telephone Consultation

Description

In the first scenario, I played the role of a patient with impaired hearing, awaiting a telephone consultation with a practice nurse regarding blood pressure readings. The call was delayed, arriving after I had fallen asleep, and the patient character also reported a loss of appetite and potential weight loss since the closure of a local day centre.

Feelings

I felt slightly disoriented and inconvenienced when the call arrived later than expected, which reflected the patient’s experience of being dependent on the call for both medical advice and social contact. I was also struck by the sense of isolation conveyed in the scenario: the patient relied heavily on this interaction and on the weekly support of a volunteer.

Evaluation

The use of the telephone enabled continuity of care but also introduced barriers. Hearing impairment significantly hindered communication, and the absence of visual cues limited the nurse’s ability to detect non-verbal signs of distress or frailty. On the positive side, the interaction emphasised how remote monitoring technologies allow patients to track blood pressure at home, reducing the need for frequent clinic visits. However, this highlighted the risk of important concerns, such as weight loss and loneliness, being overlooked.

Analysis

The scenario underlined a critical issue: technology can improve accessibility but may also reinforce isolation or marginalisation for vulnerable groups, particularly older adults with sensory impairments (Greenhalgh et al., 2017). Furthermore, the lack of face-to-face interaction limited the nurse’s opportunity to perform a holistic assessment of the patient’s wellbeing. The consultation demonstrated the importance of flexibility, sensitivity, and active listening in digital healthcare delivery.

Continued...