This study has shown that issues affecting patient safety
could be present throughout the whole process of telenursing:
the gathering of information, the cognitive processing
and the output. The most striking threat to safety
was that telenurses did not seem to explore background
information when gathering and assessing callers’ symptoms,
while other possible threats to patient safety could
be related to the surrounding society and technical
equipment. Areas to be focused on to improve patient
safety are organisational development and telenursing
education. As communication appears to be the key to
safe care, the communication between telenurse and
caller needs further research and different communication
models should be tested in large-scale studies before
implementation in clinical practice