• Fred Rincon, Matthew Vibbert, Valerie Childs, Robin Fry, Dennis Caliguri, Jacqueline Urtecho, Robert Rosenwasser, and Jack Jallo.
• Departments of Neurology, Divisions of Critical Care and Neurotrauma, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia 19107, USA. fred.rincon@jefferson.edu
• Neurocrit Care. 2012 Aug 1;17(1):97-101.

IntroductionRobotic tele-presence (RTP) is a form of mobile telemedicine, which enables a direct face-to-face rapid response by the physician, instead of the traditional telephonic paradigm. We hypothesized that a model of RTP for after-hour ICU rounds and emergencies would be associated with improved ICU nurse satisfaction.MethodsWe implemented a prospective nighttime multidisciplinary ICU round time, using RTP at our neuro-ICU. To test for critical ICU nurse team satisfaction, a questionnaire was implemented. The primary outcome was nurse satisfaction measured through a questionnaire with answers trichotomized into: agreement, disagreement, and no opinion. The occurrence of outcomes was compared between the groups by χ2 or Fisher exact tests for the difference in proportions (PD) with Bonferroni correction for multiple pairwise comparisons.ResultsIn total, 34 nurses completed the pre-survey and 40 nurses completed the post-survey. Night nurses were more likely to agree that RTP was associated with: ICU physicians being sufficiently available in the ICU (agreement 6-20%, PD 14%, p = 0.008), present during acute emergencies (agreement 44-65%, PD 21%, p = 0.007), and had enough time to get questions answered from the physician team (agreement 41-53%, PD 11%, p = NS).ConclusionsThis data suggest improvement in critical care nursing team satisfaction with a model of RTP in the neuroscience ICU, particularly during nighttime hours. RTP is a tool that may enhance communication among components of the ICU team.

29 keywords...

hide…