Abstract
Background
Several technological innovations have been introduced in healthcare over the years, and their implementation proved crucial in addressing challenges of modern health. Healthcare workers have frequently been called upon to become familiar with technological innovations that pervade every aspect of their profession, changing their working schedule, habits, and daily actions.
Purpose
An in-depth analysis of the paths towards the acceptance and use of technology may facilitate the crafting and adoption of specific personnel policies taking into consideration definite levers, which appear to be different in relation to the age of nurses.
Approach
The strength of this study is the application of UTAUT model to analyse the acceptance of innovations by nurses in technology-intensive healthcare contexts. Multidimensional Item Response Theory is applied to identify the main dimensions characterizing the UTAUT model. Paths are tested through two stage regression models and validated using a SEM covariance analysis.
Results
The age is a moderator for the social influence: social influence, or peer opinion, matters more for young nurse.
Conclusion
The use of MIRT to identify the most important items for each construct of UTAUT model and an in-depth path analysis helps to identify which factors should be considered a leverage to foster nurses’ acceptance and intention to use new technologies (o technology-intensive devices).
Practical implications
Young nurses may benefit from the structuring of shifts with the most passionate colleagues (thus exploiting the social influence), the participation in ad hoc training courses (thus exploiting the facilitating conditions), while other nurses could benefit from policies that rely on the stressing of the perception of their expectations or the downsizing of their expectancy of the effort in using new technologies.
What Drives Continuance Intention towards Social Media? Social Influence and Identity Perspectives
