Our work
Find out more about the work of the RCN eHealth Forum and the other organisations we work with
How we represent forum members
- Providing an effective voice on eHealth matters.
- Shaping eHealth policies for safer and better care.
- Supporting members to use ICT with confidence and competence.
- Enabling opportunities for discussion and learning about ICT.
- Providing support to the nursing team.
The RCN defines eHealth as concerned with promoting, empowering and facilitating health and wellbeing with individuals, families and communities, and the enhancement of professional practice through the use of information, information management and communication technology (ICT). Discover more about eHealth and the forum's 'Every Nurse an eNurse' work on the eHealth Clinical Topic page.
Our strategy
Our strategy is to address findings from the recent RCN led consultation on the digital future of nursing - 'digital ready' - focusing on the themes of digital skills development; nursing leadership and the nursing contribution to digital practice.
For clinicians this means we will:
- Promote the nursing contribution to the design and operation of eHealth
- Demonstrate the value of digital capabilities to nursing staff
- Provide learning support for developing digital skills
- Engage RCN professional fora on digital developments
- Publicise opportunities for leadership development and nursing roles in digital practice
We will research and deliver guidelines for the workplace on matters relating to eHealth and build relationships both across the RCN and other nursing bodies and outside the organisation continuing to forge productive working partnerships with NHS Digital, Health Education England, the Faculty of Clinical Informatics, the British Computer Society and the Professional Records Standards Body among others. We will also work with the Nursing and Midwifery Council, Chief Nursing Officers across the UK and the Nursing informatics networks (e.g. the 5 nation group, the GDE nursing network).
Through this work we want to embed enduring relations across the nursing workforce enabling feedback loops so that we are listening and responding to the reality of nursing as it is on the ground. This will help us understand better the challenges faced in the workplace and help ensure nurses, patients and services get the best from eHealth.
e-Health Forum Annual Report 2022
What we are currently working on:
Every Nurse an eNurse (ENeN)
In 2016, Congress passed the resolution ‘Every Nurse an eNurse’ and this has become the primary workstream of the RCN eHealth Forum. ENeN strives to help nurses and related professions successfully navigate the challenges of eHealth. By helping to position nursing closer to the heart of digital transformation, ENeN provokes debate about the role of nursing in eHealth, what it means for the profession and showcases examples of where the nursing perspective has led the way in enabling the very best in eHealth practices for the benefit of patients, clinical services, clinicians and researchers.
The 3 pillars of ENeN are:
- People expect the best in technologically enabled care
- Modern nursing and midwifery requires digital capabilities
- Clinical needs must shape the design and operation of eHealth
By highlighting and sharing learning from projects which deal with these three pillars in some aspect we aim to engage the nursing workforce, influence policy and publish useful guidance for nurses involved either in delivering digitally enabled services or in the thick of the fight to influence and design it.
Page last updated - 29/10/2023
