When COVID-19 hit at the beginning of 2020, the Duke Children's Hospital Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (PCICU) team had to immediately limit hospital visitors to safeguard the health of their pediatric patients. This presented a meaningful challenge to the hospital team because it limited parent access during patient rounds.
“The PCICU leads family-centered rounds where parents meet with their children’s healthcare providers and learn about their treatment and care,” explains Sarah Tallent, Pediatric Critical Care Nurse Practitioner, who recently published a paper on the PCICU’s implementation of the Meeting Owl.
“Family-centered care and its delivery rapidly changed due to COVID-19 and left the family behind — unable to actively participate in their loved one’s care.”
The Duke PCICU didn’t have an alternative in place for physically participating in rounds, so when COVID-19 hit, they had to rapidly implement a solution that would allow parents to participate in rounds when they couldn’t attend in-person due to COVID-related restrictions. For this, they turned to the Meeting Owl to launch a virtual rounding pilot program to evaluate how it impacted rounding times, practitioner workloads, and patient satisfaction.
The Meeting Owl was chosen primarily because, after hospital-wide masking was implemented, the team needed a solution that offered excellent audio quality even with in-person participants wearing masks. The Meeting Owl was set up on a wheeled computer cart that could be moved from patient to patient during rounds.
Approximately two months after implementing the Meeting Owl for virtual rounds, the team surveyed healthcare providers and patient families about their experience with the program, specifically asking providers if virtual rounds increased rounding time or workload, and families about how it impacted their satisfaction with their care.
The team found that rounding times and provider workloads weren’t increased as a result of implementing virtual rounds with the Meeting Owl, and parents were equally satisfied with the care and communication they experienced.
As COVID-19 restrictions at the hospital lessen over time, virtual rounding will still be a great option for parents or caregivers who can’t attend rounds in-person for other reasons.
“The need for innovative ways to include families in daily medical rounds even if they cannot be present physically was identified before COVID-19,” Sarah explains. “The advent of limited visitation in a pandemic setting created a sense of urgency for our team to implement a virtual option to allow families to join daily medical rounds remotely.”
The Meeting Owl helps healthcare organizations connect with patients and family members during rounds when they can’t meet in-person.