Nurse leaders should leverage both virtual nursing and multidisciplinary care teams to remove burdens from the bedside nurse, say these nurse leaders.
Virtual nursing will continue to become the standard of care in health systems across the industry.
However, there are still several roadblocks that stand in the way of virtual nursing becoming the perfect solution for staffing and care delivery issues.
The HealthLeaders 2025 Virtual Nursing Mastermind program participants met earlier this week in Atlanta to discuss their virtual nursing programs and the outcomes they have achieved so far. There are two key points that CNOs can take back to their health systems to help fine tune their own virtual nursing programs.
Involving multidisciplinary teams
From the beginning, the selling point for virtual nursing has been that it will remove burdens from the bedside and give time back to nurses. However, the Mastermind participants made it clear that virtual nursing is not going to solve every problem that nurses are facing in the industry. Nurses are burnt out, and while the addition of a virtual nurse can help offload administrative tasks such as admissions and discharges, there are still plenty of tasks that could be outsourced to other departments in a heath system.
Since nursing is the largest part of the workforce, it has become easy to pass things off to nurses. However, according to Derek Godino, senior program director of nursing at Geisinger and Mastermind participant, nurses should be able to rely on multidisciplinary teams to support them and remove some of their burden. The participants emphasized that not every task currently being completed by a nurse needs to necessarily be done by RNs.
To Godino, it's time to reimagine workflows at a system level.
"We have to disrupt the health system model, not individual care team models," Godino said.
To the participants, leaders should consider relocating tasks to multidisciplinary teams in addition to assigning them to virtual nurses. CNOs and other nurse leaders should also look at other industries to see how they are successfully integrating technology and try to adapt some of those strategies into their own healthcare workflows.
Reimagining the bedside model
The second takeaway from the participants is that the traditional models of care at the bedside are no longer going to be enough to sustain nursing. The nursing shortage will continue unless nurse leaders are able to incentivize people to become nurses and stay in the workforce. Virtual nursing can be one solution for that, along with incorporating other technologies such as AI and ambient listening that can further remove tasks and documentation burdens.
According to Stephanie Johnson, executive director of system virtual care for UnityPoint Health and Mastermind participant, CNEs, CNOs, and other nurse leaders must advocate for investment in technology as tools that will allow nursing to continue as a profession. The pitfalls of not investing in technology will greatly outweigh the potential savings.
"The CNE needs to be able to envision virtual nursing and other augmented resources as the way in which we will remain viable as a nursing workforce," Johnson said.
To the participants, an ideal virtual nursing program would involve consolidated technology with a streamlined user interface that allows the nurse to follow the patient throughout their entire care journey. It would take into account best nursing practices, get other disciplines involved, and ultimately enable nurses to do their jobs more efficiently and effectively, while recentering their time with patients as the focal point of the profession.
There's more to come from the 2025 Virtual Nursing Mastermind program, so stay tuned for more coverage and the final report.
The HealthLeaders Mastermind series is an exclusive series of calls and events with healthcare executives. This Virtual Nursing Mastermind series features ideas, solutions, and insights on accelerating your virtual nursing program. Please join the community at our LinkedIn page.
To inquire about participating in an upcoming Mastermind series or attending a HealthLeaders Exchange event, email us at exchange@healthleadersmedia.com.
G Hatfield is the CNO editor for HealthLeaders.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Nurse leaders should consider relocating tasks to multidisciplinary teams in addition to assigning them to virtual nurses.
Virtual nursing can be one solution for staffing shortages, along with incorporating other technologies like AI and ambient listening that can further remove tasks and documentation burdens.
CNOs and other nurse leaders should also look at other industries to see how they are successfully integrating technology and try to adapt some of those strategies into their own healthcare workflows.