Read the full article
By Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN
As hospitals and health systems grapple with labor shortages and unsustainable losses, it remains essential that they stay focused on improving patient safety.
However, it’s becoming clear that we are not winning the patient safety battle. A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), published in January 2023, revealed that nearly 24% of patients experienced an adverse event during their hospitalization in 2018. Although there are no multisite studies of this type yet published from the pandemic years, common sense and a 2021 single-site study by LeRose et al. published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology indicate we are continuing to lose ground.
To overcome challenges associated with staffing shortages and improve patient safety, many leading hospitals and health systems have turned to virtual monitoring technology, in which a remote team of care providers supports a hospital’s bedside providers through audio and visual connections in patient rooms. This model of care helps health systems improve clinical safety and quality while liberating their bedside nurses to provide elevated, hands-on patient care.
Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN, is the chief clinical officer of AvaSure.