Steering resilience in nursing practice: Examining the impact of digital innovations and enhanced emotional training on nurse competencies

The phenomenal development of healthcare practice in the past few decades has reinforced the view that technology could potentially be the third healing triad element. This study, using data from Australia and the United Kingdom, explores resilience in nursing education through the lens of emerging digital technologies and enhanced emotional training. The study employed a mixed-method approach. A pretest-posttest was used to collect data from 54 nursing students during the lectures and tutorials, whilst the qualitative consisted of interviews with 20 health professionals, including nurse teachers and doctors. We found that students’ confidence in mental health nursing practice improved substantially after mental health placement. Besides, the effectiveness of the training offered was not compromised by variances in the demographic groups (e.g. age and gender) amongst the participants. The interview findings revealed that nurses could develop more outstanding modern capabilities with exposure to increasingly used technologies in the healthcare sector; thus, AI and digital technology and health-related engineering equipment can help reduce stress in the profession as machines become critical aid. Technology is, thus, not a threat but a necessary complement that can upskill nurses for contemporary practice.