An appraisal of Nursing Informatics Research and the Influence of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology

Abstract The study recognized the importance of healthcare informatics in today’s dynamic health systems, and narrows down to how nursing informatics, a component of healthcare informatics, can provide efficient and effective healthcare delivery. Hence, underpinned by the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT), the study aimed at situating research activities on nursing informatics within existing studies that have applied the theory to investigate healthcare informatics in general. The study adopted a systematic review of literature to explored online databases: Google Scholar and Ebscohost from 2014 to 2019. The search returned a total of 205 articles for the specified period. However, only 8 eligible studies were found to be related specifically to nursing informatics. The study also revealed that performance expectancy and effort expectancy (respectively), both being constructs of the UTAUT, are the dominating factors influencing the acceptance/adoption/use of nursing informatics among the papers under review. The study recommends that researchers should further explore the use of nursing informatics technologies in healthcare. In addition; nursing informatics system designers should factor in the effectiveness and ease of use of the technologies for easy usage. On the other hand, the stakeholders in medical field are called upon to provide the enabling infrastructure to enhance the use of nursing informatics technologies