Nursing informatics and coaching based interventions: a protocol for delivery

Coaching is a motivational approach often used to encourage the implementation of self-management educational instruction. It encompasses the processing, management, and retrieval of information. Coaching is not a common interaction routinely used in nursing care. This may be due to unfamiliarity with the interaction and/or lack of understanding of how to engage in coaching behaviours within the clinical setting. The purpose of this discursive paper was to present a detailed, step-by-step description of a protocol for delivering a coaching based intervention to patients following heart surgery and to discuss the process of delivering such interventions via nursing informatics. Conclusions drawn from this paper suggest that in order to enhance the application of technology in the delivery of coaching or support based interactions in the cardiovascular surgical environment, continued investigation to assess patients’ needs for technology and desirability to use technology as a tool to assist in their post-operative recovery experience is needed.