Virtual Nursing Pilot Team
The 3 West Virtual Nursing Pilot is a great example of my latest mantra, “building for the future.” The program is an important building block in improving patient outcomes and experience while boosting team member satisfaction and retention — two key goals in our strategic plan and becoming a best place to work.
In February, Scott Austin, the Interim Director of General Medicine, presented his vision for virtual nursing to reduce the workload of our bedside care team while enhancing patient satisfaction and throughput. 3 West is the perfect unit for this pilot because it already has telehealth monitors in place, which were used during the pandemic to limit COVID-19 exposure.
3 West Room equipped with telehealth television monitor
In the pilot’s first phase, a team of experienced nurses (Amy Blackman, Carly Frazier, and Lindsay Greiling) is using telehealth monitors to enhance the discharge planning process on the unit for eligible patients. This is important because discharge planning and teaching are vital, but time-consuming. By shifting the process to the virtual nursing team, we free up time for bedside care teams to focus on other crucial needs.
The pilot program went live in April 2024 and the results so far are encouraging:
- On average, the virtual nursing team has saved bedside nurses approximately 50 minutes per discharge.
- The team has discharged roughly 100 patients.
- 95% of surveyed nurses have given positive feedback, such as:
- “I was able to focus on my other patient who needed an MRI with sedation.”
- “It was an early morning discharge, so I was able to complete my morning meds/assessments for my other patients.”
- “I had two discharges at once, one required a lot of teaching so I would not have been able to juggle two discharges at once along with my other patients.”
The 3 West team, Telemedicine, Pharmacy, Discharge Lounge, our Heart Failure nurse navigator colleagues, and everyone involved in this collaboration deserve kudos for their contributions. Learning from our success, we are already planning next phases of this pilot to continue to build a better future for patients and our care teams.
Think of what this virtual helping hand could mean for the future of patient care and the work environment. I hope you’re as excited as I am to see what comes next.
As we continue to build for the future, let’s explore new ways to approach patient care and your work at UVA Health. Share your ideas with me through the Be Heard Suggestion Box.
Take care and be well,
Wendy