The amount of technology that’s in the hospital room today is extraordinary. We have more monitors at our fingertips than ever before that are all watching and alerting us of potential problems for the patients that need to be addressed. Of course, with this growth of technology we’ve also seen the growth of burnout and alert fatigue as devices send off warnings that aren’t useful and the volume of alerts that a nurse is getting is overwhelming.
At the HIMSS 2024 conference, Elizabeth Anderson, Director, Clinical Experience & Solutions, Karthik Srivathsa, Vice President of Healthcare Engineering, and Trina Geiss, Senior Product Manager – Interoperability at Rauland, presented as session at the thought leadership theater called “Responder Enterprise: Lighting the Way to Efficient Patient Care – How Interoperability and Analytics Change the Nurse Call Paradigm” that took a good look at this problem and presented some solutions to nurses being overwhelmed with alerts. Plus, they look at how interoperability can help address this problem and provide valuable analytics.
Here’s our summary of the session along with some additional commentary.
This session introduced me to a new term I’d never heard before when they talked about some people calling nurse call data “digital dust.” Rauland took issue with the term because they saw nurse call data as a pathway to valuable insights into how a healthcare organization can address nurse burnout. They’re right that nurse call data holds the keys to informing the clinical decision-making process. Plus, by understanding patient behaviors in this data you can optimize staff and discover operational effeciencies.
The image below illustrates the explosion of devices in a room that nurses have to manage. Rauland aptly pointed out that each dot likely represents more time nurses are managing devices vs patients. When working to solve interoperability in healthcare, being able to integrate data from these various sources such as patient beds, RTLS, and mobile devices is key to really paint a comprehensive picture of the patient and staff experience. Doing so allows an organizations to enhance clinical decision support tools and also foster a more holistic approach to healthcare delivery.
As mentioned above, the key to making this data useful is to turn it into actionable insights that are meaningful to the nurse. That goes well beyond the lights and tones of the past. Doing so is what makes Rauland’s solution so powerful.
In many cases, one of the biggest problem with these devices is that they’re not interoperable. This leaves the clinician hunting and gathering for data across a multitude of devices and platforms. An interoperable platform relieves the clinicians of this duty so they can spend more time with patients.
All of this data from an interoperable platfom can help managers become better managers. The data can help them understand what’s happening on their unit, improve discharges, and ultimately better patient care.
It’s easy to talk about a nurse call platform that’s able to bridge the gap from all of these devices and data sources into actionable events and alerts for the nurses. It’s another thing to actually execute it. The slide below illustrates the full platform that’s needed to make this a reality for a hospital.
The good news is that the benefits from tapping into nurse call data is plentiful. By leveraging enhanced EHR integration, virtual care integration, and reducing alarm fatigue, you can reduce the administrative burden and burnout for nurses.
We all know that the number one driver of alarm fatigue is when the alarms are sent to people who don’t need them or when the alarm isn’t actionable for the clinician. New systems only alarm the people who are needed and the right clinician and the right time. Sounds simple, but it’s hard to implement in practice. It takes a vendor experienced with alarms and an integrated solution across all of the various alarms to make this a reality.
While these changes are great for existing staff, they’re likely going to increase in importance as new generations enter the field. Rauland pointed out that new staff needed to have adequate training and support. Otherwise, you’ll burn those new staff out and run into staffing challenges.
Of course, what does the ideal nurse call system look like? There’s a lot of nuance to it, but Rauland shared this interopability showcase demo which highlights a number of ways that the right nurse call tool connected in your organization can improve the experience dramatically. My favorite part is the automations that are built into the process. I love when a workflow uses technology to automatically do something based on a separate trigger. That’s powerful.
We all see how our nurses are burnt out with the burdens that many of them are experiencing. Dealing with the wave of alerts they see every day is one good step to addressing some of the burnout they’re feeling. Plus, this leads to better patient care since the nurse can focus on the patient as opposed to the device and alert. It’s also great to see Rauland taking all this nurse call data and turning it into insights for the nurse managers and other leaders. That’s a great approach which empowers leaders with better data.
What do you think of this approach to nurse call? What has your organization done to change the nurse call paradigm in your organization? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments or on social media.
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