The New Bedside Manner: Why Digital Skills Are Now Clinical Skills

For decades, bedside manner meant tone of voice, body language, and presence. Today, it also means how nurses and clinicians use digital tools in the room with a patient.

When a patient sees you typing into an electronic health record, scanning data from an AI tool, or sending a secure message, it shapes their trust. A rushed click-through screen feels cold. Taking a moment to explain what you are entering, or showing the patient how the system supports their care, builds confidence.

Digital bedside manner is not about mastering the latest software. It is about integrating technology into care in a way that preserves humanity. Patients notice if you are speaking to the screen instead of them. They also notice when you use the screen to include them.

Clinical leaders must start teaching digital bedside manner as deliberately as communication or safety protocols. The future nurse is not only a skilled clinician. The future nurse is also a translator between human care and digital systems.

Technology changes the tools at the bedside, but trust still depends on the human using them.

When you look at your own practice, does the technology in the room help you build trust or get in the way?