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An established presence in the Silicon Valley venture capital sphere, David Colin Burke leads Selby Lane, LLC. Having earned law and international relations degrees at the University of Virginia (UVA), David Colin Burke maintains a strong relationship with his alma mater. He lectures at the UVA McIntire School of Commerce.
A pair of professors at McIntire published a study in late 2020 focused on the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on nurses. A particular focus was on “technostress,” or digitally linked stress. This falls into two basic categories, with positive stress pushing nurses to accomplish required tasks, and negative stress acting as a hindrance to fulfilling them.
Interviews with nurses at multiple Washington DC-area hospitals revealed that there were several positive aspects of technology stress (or “challenge stressors”). These included the greater ease with which information about patients could be shared with colleagues and between departments.
On the other hand, having a device on hand created concern among the nurses that interacting digitally was perceived by patients as impacting the amount of personal attention they received. In addition, health care technology was seen as creating an information overload, with excessive time needed for inputting and processing data.
The McIntire School of Commerce researchers found that negative stress was predominant, in part because the nurses were already overworked, even without the extra time required to sift through data. In addition, many nurses had been transferred from various units and needed to be trained on new, complex platforms.
