Digitization Processes in Slovak Healthcare Sector – The Issue of Slovak Doctors and Nurses

Abstract

One of the main health policy initiatives in European Union countries is the transition from a patriarchal medical model to a co-managed and integrated approach of personalized healthcare. The 2030 Agenda elements implementation for Health and Quality of Life in terms of technological advances enables the of healthcare delivery optimization. The impact of the elements of digital health and care can be observed on the patient care delivery side and also on the healthcare professionals’ performance side. It has the potential to contribute to reducing, in particular, preventable and avoidable mortality, which represent large economic losses in terms of lost productive years. This study focuses on the assessment of job satisfaction with digitalization among doctors and nurses working in hospitals. The research was conducted through a questionnaire survey. The respondents were doctors and nurses working in hospitals in Slovakia. The study evaluates the satisfaction of doctors and nurses with the digitization of work according to the basic characteristics of the respondents by means of correspondence analysis. The goal of the study is to investigate the bureaucratic burden of nurses and doctors regarding digitalization of work in health care institutions as a modern society development prerequisite based on smart technologies. The research was conducted on primary data collected between April 2022 and November 2023 through a questionnaire survey among doctors and nurses working in Slovak hospitals as part of the research task of the APVV 19-0579 project. Forty hospitals in Slovakia were contacted and the sample consisted of 212 doctors and 752 nurses. The normality of the data distribution was carried out by means of histogram and Gaussian curve when being found out to be not normally distributed. Subsequently, they were analysed through descriptive statistics and correspondence analysis. Correspondence analysis was used to investigate the relationship between digitization and administrative burden to the basic characteristics of the respondents, and the relationships were visualized through a correspondence map. The impact of digitization of work and administrative burden is to be also analysed, as smart healthcare elements should have a positive impact on reducing or simplifying administration within the work of doctors and nurses. The results have revealed that, both doctors and nurses lack application of new technologies that along with digitization of work in medical practice bring up a lot of benefits. The results of the study highlight the importance of digital transformation in healthcare, identifying the impact of technologies usage on various aspects of medical practice, such as speed and accuracy of diagnosis. Elements of digitization implemented into healthcare systems bring a modernization effect and faster data availability to the daily work of doctors and nurses. However, the impact on job satisfaction is insufficient and makes precisely the opposite perception. The conclusion is that the administrative burden has not changed significantly despite the digitization of several administrative activities in healthcare and still remains a significant issue, which can also be considered as a challenge for policy makers.