Throughout the course of our Virtual Registered Nursing Experience pilot, we’ve learned that even the best laid plans are subject to changes and adjustments along the way. Our pilot design started with four workflows and quickly evolved to ten, and each comes with a series of lessons we’ve learned as we wrap up this pilot. These are just a few of the 60+ items we’ve identified along the way:
- Diversity in patient care units and hospitals has created “menu-style” workflows where bedside nurses can “order” what they want and collaborate in a style that accommodates their needs and the needs of their patients.
- Discharge activities and quality reviews are the most “ordered” workflows.
- The safety net to our preventable harm initiatives has provided an approximate 20% improvement in our VRN pilot units when compared to control units.
- We recently piloted three different hardware configurations to see what technology stack best supports the VRN work, but we’ve learned that most of the VRN support and workflows don’t require technology at all. Approximately 70% of our workflows are done without any bedside, mobile, or in-room audio/visual equipment.
- The other 30% of our workflows are fairly evenly spread across the tech stacks we evaluated.
These lessons challenge us to think about our standard work and tools as we operationalize our program in our region and continue to innovate to provide the best care possible for our patients.
