HELENA — Just over a year ago, St. Peter’s Health says it became the first hospital in Montana to implement virtual nursing as an expansion of the patient care team.
Kari Koehler, the chief nursing officer at St. Pete’s, said, “Being able to bring the virtual nurse in is really about providing support.” Support for bedside nurses and patients at all hours of the day.
The virtual nursing program was launched to help address the growing shortage of nurses and reduce burnout among the nursing staff. Now, retention of RNs has increased by 50 percent.
Nurse Paige Plancich said, “We have a lot of patients that need a lot of things, and sometimes it is really hard to spend half an hour on an admission or a half an hour to an hour on a discharge, and so having somebody be able to be that catchall has been very helpful.”
Virtual nurses are somewhat similar to telehealth technology-wise wise but are solely used for inpatients rather than outpatients with scheduled appointments.
“Virtual nursing, just like a nurse at the bedside, they can come in and out of your room as needed,” Koehler said.
Virtual nurses interact with patients using a webcam and the room's television, documenting patient information in real-time, and are available 24/7 to relieve some of the duties of the bedside crew.
Plancich said, “It is important to know that we work as one.”
For St. Peter’s Health, this is just one innovative step they are taking to shape the future of healthcare in Montana.
“Montana tends to be behind sometimes with technology, so it is really exciting that we can bring this care and more technology to the state as a whole," Koehler said.
Virtual nurses have provided St. Peter’s patients with more than 30,000 hours of care.
