Readiness of senior students to participate in a nursing environment of digital technology in hospitals in Cape Town

In 2020, the healthcare sector was transformed into a new era called Healthcare 4.0. It is also known as the era of smart medicine, an era brought along by the forthcoming 4IR. Nursing students form a fundamental part of the healthcare sector, and in the use of Information Technology (IT) in our healthcare environments.Therefore, it is of extreme importance that these students should be ready for a technology-mediated healthcare environment in the new era of healthcare. They should acquire basic technology skills, such as obtaining competence in both the use of patient care technologies and information management systems.The objectives of the study are to determine the extent to which senior students are ready to participate in a nursing environment of digital technology in hospitals in Cape Town, as well as to describe the support to be given to nursing students to be ready for a nursing environment of digital technology in hospitals in Cape Town.A non-experimental, descriptive quantitative design was used during this study. A survey with a self-developed questionnaire consisting of 39 items on the willingness of senior students to participate in a nursing environment of digital technology in hospitals in Cape Town was utilised by the researcher. The accessible study population consisted of 108 nursing students in their 3rd and 4th years, which served as the total sample of the study.Descriptive and inferential statistics included an Exploratory Factor Analysis that indicated the reliability of the instrument through the Cronbach’s Alphas (∝) of the three factors, with values between 0.766595 to 0.888589. The Pearson Square Test ) and The Likelihood Ratio Test (refined the Pearson Test and determined the best data distribution given in a specific situation in the data), were conducted using the significance level of p