Nursing informatics in nursing education: a challenge to nurse teachers

The use of computers in education has become commonplace. In this study with 162 nurse teachers,we found that although most nursing colleges in Finland have the necessary hardware for teaching informatics, teachers are not familiar with the software that is available for nursing education purposes. Teachers also lack confidence in their own abilities to cope with computer-assisted education. The information systems used in practical nursing are often inaccessible to nurse teachers. The teachers themselves say they would regularly need further training in their own computer skills.