Department of Intensive Care, College of Intensive Care Medicine of Australia and New Zealand, Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District, Wollongong Hospital, Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
Department of Intensive Care, Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District, Wollongong Hospital, Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
J Intensive Care Med. 2021 Oct;36(10):1130-1140. doi: 10.1177/08850666211030845. Epub 2021 Jul 22.
Few challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic strike at the very core of our humanity as the inability of family to sit at the bedside of their loved ones when battling for their lives in the ICU. Virtual visiting is one tool to help deal with this challenge. When introducing virtual visiting into our ICU, we identified 5 criteria for a sustainable system that aligned with patient-family-centered care: virtual visiting needed to (1) simulate open and flexible visiting; (2) be able to accommodate differences in family size, dynamics, and cultural practices; (3) utilize a video conferencing platform that is private and secure; (4) be easy to use and not require special teams to facilitate meetings; and (5) not increase the workload of ICU staff. There is a growing body of literature demonstrating a global movement toward virtual visiting in ICU, however there are no publications that describe a system which meet all 5 of our criteria. Importantly, there are no papers describing systems of virtual visiting which mimic open and flexible family presence at the bedside. We were unable to find any off-the-shelf video conferencing platforms that met all our criteria. To come up with a solution, a multidisciplinary team of ICU staff partnered with healthcare technology adoption consultants and two technology companies to develop an innovative system called HowRU. HowRU uses the video conferencing platform Webex with the integration of some newly designed software that automates many of the laborious and complex processes. HowRU is a cloud based, supported, and simplified system that closely simulates open and flexible visiting while ensuring patient and family privacy, dignity, and security. We have demonstrated the transferability of HowRU by implanting it into a second ICU. HowRU is now commercially available internationally. We hope HowRU will improve patient-family-centered care in ICU.
在 COVID-19 大流行期间，几乎没有什么挑战能像 ICU 中亲人因生命垂危而无法在床边陪伴的情况那样直击人性的核心。虚拟探视是应对这一挑战的工具之一。在我们的 ICU 引入虚拟探视时，我们确定了与以患者和家庭为中心的护理相一致的可持续系统的 5 个标准：虚拟探视需要 (1) 模拟开放和灵活的探视；(2) 能够适应家庭规模、动态和文化实践的差异；(3) 使用私人和安全的视频会议平台；(4) 易于使用，不需要专门的团队来协助会议；(5) 不增加 ICU 工作人员的工作量。越来越多的文献表明 ICU 中正在进行虚拟探视的全球运动，但是没有出版物描述符合我们所有 5 个标准的系统。重要的是，没有描述模拟床边开放和灵活的家庭存在的虚拟探视系统的论文。我们找不到任何符合我们所有标准的现成的视频会议平台。为了解决这个问题，一个由 ICU 工作人员组成的多学科团队与医疗保健技术采用顾问以及两家科技公司合作，开发了一种名为 HowRU 的创新系统。HowRU 使用 Webex 视频会议平台，并整合了一些新设计的软件，这些软件自动化了许多繁琐和复杂的流程。HowRU 是一个基于云的、受支持的、简化的系统，它在确保患者和家庭的隐私、尊严和安全的同时，紧密模拟开放和灵活的探视。我们通过将其植入另一个 ICU 证明了 HowRU 的可转移性。HowRU 现已在国际上商业化。我们希望 HowRU 将改善 ICU 中的以患者和家庭为中心的护理。
