CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Technological
Knowing

Patient
Client
Participative
Caring Person Engaging

Nursing has frequently been named the most trusted profession. As a nursing practice

process, technological knowing (Locsin, 2009) involves knowing persons through technologies

of health and nursing which are significantly used to know persons more fully as whole and

complete in the moment. As a practice process, its use is dependent upon its theoretical

grounding - in technological competency as caring in nursing. While technology has the potential

to bring the patient closer to the nurse by enhancing the nurses ability to know the person more

fully, conversely, technology can also increase the gap between the nurse and nursed by the

nurses conscious disregard of the patient as person, and ignorance of the nursing imperative to

know the patient as person. In many situations, nurses have felt that advanced technology may

distance them from patients because they need to pay such close and extensive attention to the

equipment. Nevertheless, it is through such equipment that critical information can be retrieved
 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

allowing nurses to focus more on being with the person who is being nursed. With technological

knowing as process of nursing, communicating the co-created moment between the nurse and the

one nursed is essential if nursing is to maintain the humanity of persons in a high-tech world of

health care. As perceptive as the nurse can be of the nursing situation, the technological knowing

of persons within the phenomenon of being cared for with technologies, and of nurses caring for

persons with these technologies can be understood and communicated in myriad ways, thus

influencing the maintenance of humanity in a technological world. A central theme of nursing is

Caring. The integration of Technology as a means of data collection and improving patient

safety is reaching maturity. One of the best ways to assess a patient is by looking directly at

them. Nurses have been witnessed completing assessments with little hands on with the patient.

One way to ensure that caring is not lost in the infrastructure of the electronic system is a notion

of Shared Competence in the use of the electronic medical record. Technological competency as

caring in nursing, provides a rich understanding of how technology and caring can be integrated

in competent nursing care. As technology continues to evolve, the priority must always remain

with the patient. Nursing as a profession has an obligation to interact with clients in the

moment. Data collection and assessment is more meaningful when a trusting relationship is built

between nurse and client. Caring is the foundation of this relationship. Boykin and Schoenhofer

(2001) described people as being caring based on their values and virtues as human beings. The

authors also stated that people are whole and complete in the moment. If a nurse is engaged in

entering data into a computer during an assessment and is not clearly engaged with the patient,

this can be seen as a lack of commitment, dedication, or good nursing care. Technological

competence can allow the nurse to provide a caring environment while caring for the patient.
 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Through caring and trusting relationships, nurses can know their patients in the moment and

across the spectrum of time.

And so the discovery is set anew giving nurses more reasons to know the meaning of

being human, the understanding of the sphere of influence of Technological Competency as

Caring in Nursing (Locsin, 2005), and the reality of human existence in an advancing

technological world. In knowing who persons are, and as nurses, one needs to have new eyes,

new lenses through which to view the contemporary world - so that future selves and the

humanity that is so dearly valued can be preserved, albeit as techno sapiens, or post humans. It is

through technological competency as caring in nursing that nurses will be able to leap through

the advancing world of technology with new discoveries, appreciating.