Shannon Olsen

Professor Goran

Integrating Experience III

21 September 2023

Telemedicine in Acute Care

I believe that the value of telemedicine is huge because it allows for decreased healthcare costs, and a decreased mortality rate in hospitals according to VISICU in the year 2000. Being able to constantly monitor patients and do healthcare visits/checks online can save lives, time, and money.  I believe telemedicine has a great influence on the profession of nursing. Telemedicine can be helpful to nurses by having someone constantly looking at their patients’ data and helping them develop the best care plans possible. It is hard to keep track of every detail for every patient, especially when nurses are short-staffed as it is. Having an extra hand in any way will have great influence on how a nurse’s shift will go. TELEICU nurses are able to do virtual rounds, coaching of less experienced staff members, and perform patient surveillance. Telemedicine helps reduce the length that patients stay in the hospital and provide more efficient care for each person allowing for new patients to be brought in more efficiently as well. Acute care for patients in the hospital can be monitored and cared for remotely and continuously so that there is an extra set of eyes and less of a risk for complications. I was not aware that intermittent tele-consultation from Rosenfeld and Breslow was the first remote and centralized computer program for critical care. I was also unaware that telemedicine has been used for many years, and I had previously though telemedicine was fairly new because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I knew about physical check-ups and doctor visits through zoom because I personally had one during the first year of the pandemic. This presentation definitely built upon my knowledge of telemedicine by learning about patient monitoring in the ICU. I think this technology and healthcare practice is amazing and genius!