Influence of materiality in professional geriatric care: Conceptual, methodological and empirical insights.

Most people become more reliant on care and support as they age. The constitution of ageing people in the context of nursing support thus represents a material aspect in the daily life of these people and must be taken into account in the science of gerontology. However, theories of (geriatric) care have previously been predominantly human-centric. In light of the material turn, the goal of this paper is to highlight the potential to be found in using agential realism to critically examine geriatric care. It will begin by detailing previous perspectives on geriatric care and any use of material aspects to be found in it. It will then present a conceptual-methodical approach that allows for an examination of the act of caring, taking material aspects into account. The application of this approach to empirical material drawn from an example of acute care in Germany will, in conclusion, illustrate significant elements that, in light of agential realism, must also be taken into account when investigating what it means to provide good geriatric care.

A scoping review of augmented reality in nursing.

BACKGROUND: Augmented reality (AR) has the potential to be utilized in various fields. Nursing fulfils the requirements of smart glass use cases, and technology may be one method of supporting nurses that face challenges such as demographic change. The development of AR to assist in nursing is now feasible. Attempts to develop applications have been made, but there has not been an overview regarding the existing research. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this scoping review is to provide an overview of the current research regarding AR in nursing to identify possible research gaps. This led to the following research question: "To date, what research has been performed regarding the use of AR in nursing?". A focus has been placed on the topics involving cases, evaluations, and devices used. METHODS: A scoping review was carried out with the methodological steps outlined by Arksey and O'Malley (2005) and further enhanced by Levac et al. (2010). A broad range of keywords were used systematically in eight databases including PubMed, Web of Science and ACM to search for topics in nursing. RESULTS: The search led to 23 publications that were included in the final analysis. The majority of the identified publications describe pilot studies. The methods used for identifying use cases and evaluating applications differ among the included studies. Furthermore, the devices used vary from study to study and may include smart glasses, tablets, and smart watches, among others. Previous studies predominantly evaluated the use of smart glasses. In addition, evaluations did not take framing conditions into account. Reviewed publications that evaluated the use of AR in nursing also identified technical challenges associated with AR. CONCLUSIONS: These results show that the use of AR in nursing may have positive implications. While current studies focus on evaluating prototypes, future studies should focus on performing long-term evaluations to take framing conditions and the long-term consequences of AR into consideration. Our findings are important and informative for nurses and technicians who are involved in the development of new technologies. They can use our findings to reflect on their own design of case identification, requirements for elicitation and evaluation.

Smart Glasses in Nursing - Situation Change and Further Usages Exemplified on a Wound Care Application.

Smart Glasses are a promising technology that can be leveraged to improve flexible service processes. Especially in the field of nursing where practitioners are facing complex tasks and challenges. Introducing such pervasive computing devices in service processes may have both positive and negative consequences. This leads us to the following research questions: How does the usage of the Smart Glass applications change the caring situation? Which ideas for future usage of Smart Glasses do nurses have? To answer these questions we followed a design science research approach to design a prototype for support of wound care management in nursing. We evaluated the prototype in a real life situation. Five nurses used the application in a real world setting to perform a wound documentation. Afterwards, we conducted semi-structured interviews with the nurses. The intent of the interviews was not only to get information on the current prototype, but to generate knowledge about dimensions of changing the caring situation which should be considered further. The nurses gave the application an overall positive evaluation. They stated that they would expect an improvement of the quality of the wound documentation when using the device. In addition, they mentioned a change in the communication structure with the patient would be necessary. Furthermore, opinions regarding further use cases did differ.

Augmented Reality in Nursing: Designing a Framework for a Technology Assessment.

During the last decade, research emphasized the wide range of possibilities of augmented reality (AR). At the same time, Information Technology usage in nursing increased. The question occurs if AR can have reasonable fields of application in nursing. Nursing hinges strongly on the emotional and physical relationship between patients and their nurses. This may lead to ethical conflicts while implementing AR leading to special challenges. Therefore the realization of a technology assessment (TA) seams to be reasonable. We designed a framework for a TA of AR in nursing through workshops with nursing scientists and practical partners. The framework is designed to address ethical aspects of AR in nursing through techno-ethical scenarios, a plausibility assessment, and a participatory approach.