Electronic Health Reporter

Working in the ICU or a hospital can be extremely stressful. You’re assessing, monitoring, and treating  some of the sickest and most injured patients in the hospital and that responsibility is heavy. Electronic ICU or eICU services have shown to remove a significant amount of stress from the shoulders of these medical heroes.

And because they don’t feel as much pressure of being the only one in charge of all the patients, they can perform their job duties much more efficiently and competently. Here are the main ways eICU services are providing relief to ICU employees.

An Additional Layer of Care

In recent years, hospitals have become severely understaffed. The causes of this staffing shortage are many, but the end result is that the medical professionals who show up to work are extremely overworked. And as anyone who has taken on more responsibilities than they can handle will tell you, being overworked leads to burnout and mistakes, which can then translate into poor patient outcomes.

No ICU professional goes into the field intending to do the minimum they can for patients. On the contrary: they often do everything possible to ensure a patient recovers. But, when resources are lacking, each person in the ICU can only do so much. The implementation of eICU technology removes a lot of the burden on ICU staff members’ shoulders. 

Patients can be assessed immediately, even if an in-person nurse or doctor isn’t available. The technology is so advanced that the remote physician can zoom in on a patient’s IV bag to see the exact units in the bag. They can visually assess patients and see their vitals in real-time on their monitors. An in-person physician or nurse doesn’t have to stop what they’re doing with one patient to assess another, resulting in better patient outcomes for everyone.

A More Collaborative Environment

It’s challenging to have to make critical decisions multiple times a day, but it’s even more taxing if you have to make them on your own. ICU professionals are frequently put in this position and the outcomes of those decisions can weigh heavily on them. A remote ICU setup, though, removes the need for one person to make those decisions because they can always contact the physician who is monitoring their patients remotely. 

Bouncing ideas off of other medical professionals and possibly getting new perspectives on treatments is invaluable to ICU staff members who may be overwhelmed with the care responsibilities they have. Just knowing you don’t have to make all the decisions by yourself can eliminate one of the major stressors of an ICU professionals’ job. 

It all comes down to what is best for ICU patients and that is having more people involved in their care. Remote ICU services allow patients to have access to therapists, intensivists, and specialty physicians like cardiologists and oncologists whenever they need them. There’s no need to wait for a person to get to the hospital to get those assessments or treatments underway, which means the ICU staff can spend their time on other ICU tasks that can’t be done remotely.

Conclusion

Tele ICU services are making the ICU profession less stressful and medical professionals feel more supported when they know there’s someone they can always count on to be there for them and their patients. This will ultimately lead to more people staying in the job for longer and higher job satisfaction scores.