A Telementoring Experience with a Family-Focused Approach in Rural Professionals from Ecuador

Abstract

Introduction: Primary care nursing promotes and protects health. Sometimes, the Ecuadorian population at this level is attended by recently graduated professionals, with little experience to solve complex problems of reality.

Objective: To document the experience of a group of rural nursing professionals in Ecuador, with a telementoring focused on family care.

Methods: A qualitative research with a descriptive phenomenological design was carried out using semistructured interviews, validated by experts and conducted via Zoom. Five nursing professionals who completed their rural year in 2022, selected by nonprobabilistic sampling, participated. Seven preestablished categories and one emergent category were analyzed using the Atlas ti software.

Results: The participants experienced improvements in their clinical perspective, as well as new perspectives on care through telementoring. The experience promoted theory-practice integration and autonomy, as well as a critical view of health policy through learning, sharing and collaboration.

Conclusions: Telementoring favored the construction of family nursing competences in collaboration with experienced professionals and can function as a continuing education strategy for rural nursing professionals.