The future of health care is through a TV screen? A N.J. hospital thinks so.

With the press of a call button, a face fills the TV screen.

Meet your virtual nurse.

Its a reality at one New Jersey hospital and could be coming soon to a health care network near you.

As a nursing shortage threatens to cripple hospitals across the state and the nation Ocean University Medical Center in Brick thinks it has a solution. It is exploring a new program it believes can relieve some of the burden: virtual nursing.

The pilot program is being tested on the fourth floor of the hospital, where rooms are equipped with cameras and microphones, allowing patients to meet with nurses via a television screen.

Hackensack Meridian Health, the medical centers parent health system, believes its the future of health care.

Because of COVID, retirements and our dwindling workforce, theres been a lot of interest across the country to implement virtual nursing, said Theresa Brodrick, executive vice president and chief nurse executive at Hackensack Meridian Health.

Virtual nurses arent a replacement but a buffer, the health system says, assisting on-site staff with tasks that can be performed remotely like admission assessments and patient discharges.

Some hospitals and health systems throughout New Jersey utilize telehealth, but none said they use virtual nursing or a program similar to Ocean University Medical Centers pilot, according to an informal NJ Advance Media survey.

The idea behind the program is the same as telehealth: Cameras allow patients and health care workers to interact face-to-face through a screen. The nurses are trained and certified, albeit operating out of an office more than a thousand miles away.

Hackensack Meridian Health partnered with Omaha, Nebraska-based Banyan Medical Systems Virtual Care about a month ago. It will evaluate how things go on the fourth floor before deciding whether to expand the program.

The goal, Brodrick said, is to see if certain tasks can be handled remotely by these virtual nurses, not to eliminate positions.

The purpose of virtual nursing is to help enhance and augment the care that the bedside nurses are giving, Brodrick said.

Because nurses have become hard to find.

They have left the profession in droves since 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began overwhelming hospitals. Some retired. Others became burned out and quit. And many refuse to work bedsides or in emergency and critical care units after witnessing so much suffering and death.

Last year alone, roughly 100,000 U.S. nurses left their jobs even as demand grows for their services.

The end result is a massive nursing shortage. Many health systems are struggling to fill openings. And the nurses who remain are stressed and overworked, rushing from bedside to bedside, trying to keep up.

Some view virtual nursing as a way to ease the crisis.

Admission assessments, patient rounding, patient and family questions and education all of that can be done by the virtual nurse, Brodrick said, so the bedside nurse has more time to do the direct clinical care.The future?

For privacy reasons, virtual nurses do not constantly monitor patients.

A camera is mounted in the hospital room and turns on only with the patients permission, Brodrick said. Nurses must be invited onto the TV screen by the patient.

For our system, we have a nurse that rings a bell, so the patient invites them into the room through the TV, Brodrick explained.

Or the patient can ring a virtual nurse through a call button on their bedside control.

Patients can opt-out if they wish to deal only with on-site health care workers.

Virtual nurses handle roughly 20% to 25% of the administrative work that bedside nurses normally would have, the pilot program has found.

So that the bedside nurse has more time to do everything else that they have to do, Brodrick said. This is the future of nursing, for sure.

Others agree. While no other New Jersey health system seems to have implemented a virtual nurse program, that could change in the near future.

Similar programs are being tested throughout the country as society grows more accustomed to videoconferencing technology and remote centers.

The number of virtual nursing programs has risen 34% in the past year, Laura DiDio, principal analyst at the research and consulting firm ITIC, recently told HealthTech magazine.

Virtual nursing has support among some nurses. The American Nurses Association, a professional organization representing 4 million registered nurses, recently published an article on its website endorsing it.

Health Professionals and Allied Employees, the states largest nurses union, declined to comment on the program.Game-changer

Why now?

The pandemic was a game-changer. The flood of patients. The exodus of nurses. The need to find a way for patients to see health care professionals without venturing into emergency rooms or doctors offices that could be brimming with the coronavirus.

Telehealth has been around for years. The pandemic put it into everyday use.

People are growing comfortable speaking with doctors even therapists over a screen. Some began to ask: Why couldnt a nurse do the same?

Robyn Begley, CEO of the American Organization for Nursing Leadership and chief nursing officer for the American Hospital Association, sees it as a way to supplement direct care.

Part of the benefit of having a virtual nurse is theyre backing up, if you will, the nurses that are hands-on on the floor, Begley said.

They are monitoring, in many cases, the patients lab values, information that were getting electronically from monitoring equipment such as vital signs, etc. And they are just a moment away from being able to communicate with the nursing staff about things that they may notice that perhaps a nurse taking care of the patient isnt even aware of yet.

Virtual nurses dont only handle administrative tasks. They can also handle education and speak with family members.

A family member comes in to visit, and the family has questions about the care or the plan for the patient, Brodrick explained. They can ring the virtual nurse and ask the virtual nurse questions. Its also a good way for our virtual nurses to educate the family.

See, the family comes in whenever, right? Its not necessarily when the bedside nurse has the time to do it. This is a wonderful opportunity for us to educate the patient and family on everything that needs to be done when the patient goes home.

Begley also believes virtual nursing is an efficient way to utilize nurses nearing retirement who may want to remain in health care in some fashion.

The nursing shortage isnt only from nurses quitting. Retirements are another major contributor.

Baby boomers account for a large number of nurses in hospitals nationwide, Begley said. Health care systems lose a wealth of knowledge and experience with each nurse who retires.

While a rewarding job, it can be incredibly demanding, said Begley, a nurse for 45 years.

Sometimes some of our more senior nurses have, perhaps, mobility issues or arent able to undertake the workload, Begley said. Primarily, most of our nursing shifts are still 12 hours.

And so this gives them a way to extend their career, and perhaps not retire as quickly as they may have because theyre able to do very meaningful work, use their brains and all the information and the knowledge that theyve gained over the course of their careers. And yet, its not obviously as physically taxing.

Brodrick believes the program being tested at Ocean will catch on.

There are some bugs to hash out, she said mostly on the technical side but she sounded confident that the program will eventually expand into wide use.

The pilot was supposed to last a year.

But I anticipate over the course of the next few months, if its very successful, we will move well before a year to start expanding it across the network, Brodrick said.

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Spencer Kent may be reached at skent@njadvancemedia.com.