From Mountains to Monitors: Understanding Technostress in Rural Healthcare Digitalization

Nowadays, healthcare and hospital workplaces are characterized by numerous stress-inducing factors contributing to the creation of complex and high-stress environments. From research, we know that stress often arises from a series of different conditions, such as work-life conflicts, unclear role expectations, unfair behaviour by colleagues, and increased demands to conceal emotions. The digital transformation of the healthcare sector presents new challenges for workers, including exposure to tech-related stressors that contribute to determining technostress levels experienced by clinicians. Research already highlighted that two technostress components, namely techno-overload and techno-insecurity, pose a psychological risk to the mental health and well-being of healthcare professionals, particularly for those with limited digital competencies. Through the use of a mixed methods design that included the use of structured interviews, as well as two short versions of the technostress creators scale (TCS), we decided to investigate the relationships between the interests in the introduction of telemedicine services, with the technostress levels experienced by the healthcare workers that will, in the future, have to implement it in their daily working activities. The research focused on rural environments, and our data sample (16 healthcare workers) operates in the mountainous area of the Italian Dolomites. Our results show that participants already experience a medium level of technostress during their working activity, and they believe these levels will remain constant with the introduction of telemedicine services. At the same time, all participants expressed interest in the use of telemedicine and the improvement of their current activities, with the aim of bridging the gap in the availability of health services between urban and rural areas. By combining the results obtained from both the interviews and questionnaires, we can say that, although participants currently experience and expect to experience medium levels of technostress in their working activities due to the introduction of telemedicine services, such concerns are mitigated by the advantages and benefits provided by the service itself. To evaluate and safeguard the mental health of healthcare professionals, we believe that this type of investigation should be implemented before the deployment of new medical technologies. The results could lead to the development of interventions to enhance digital competencies, fostering acceptance and readiness for the use of new services.