Background: Due to the globally increasing demand for care, innovation is important to maintain
quality, safety, effectiveness, patient sensitivity, and outcome orientation. Health care technologies
could be a solution to innovate, maintain, or improve the quality of care and simultaneously
decrease nurses’ workload. Currently, nurses are rarely involved in the design of health care
technologies, mostly due to time constraints with clinical nursing responsibilities and limited
exposure to technology and design disciplines. To ensure that health care technologies fit into
nurses’ core and routine practice, nurses should be actively involved in the design process.
Objective: The aim of the present study was to explore the main requirements for nurses’ active
participation in the design of health care technologies.
Design: An exploratory descriptive qualitative design was used which helps to both understand
and describe a phenomenon.
Participants: Twelve nurses from three academic hospitals in the Netherlands participated in this
study.
Method: Data were collected from semistructured interviews with hospital nurses experienced in
design programs and thematically analysed.
Results: Four themes were identified concerning the main requirements for nurses to participate in
the design of health care technologies: (1) nurses’ motivations to participate, (2) the process of
technology development, (3) required competence to participate (such as assertiveness, creative
thinking, problem solving skills), and (4) facilitating and organizing nurses’ participation.
Conclusion: Nurses experience their involvement in the design process as essential, distinctive, and
meaningful but experience few possibilities to combine this work with their current workload,
flows, routines, and requirements. To participate in the design of health care technologies nurses
need motivation and specific competencies. Organizations should facilitate time for nurses to
acquire the required competencies and to be intentionally involved in technology design and
development activities.
