Hello _______ team!
Welcome to the BWH Virtual Staffing Pilot! We are excited to be rolling out with you all tomorrow.
What is virtual rounding? The short version is, starting tomorrow, you’ll have me as an additional team member joining you virtually (via Microsoft Teams) on rounds and after to help with prepping discharges and transfers. More on all of this below but first I wanted to list a couple of items I need from you prior to tomorrow.
Things you should do before tomorrow (______):
1) Please let me know where and what time tomorrow morning our tech team should meet you to deliver the iPad and stand.
2) Download Microsoft Teams onto your phones (ideally won’t be needed since we’ll have the iPad but can serve as back-up)
3) Make sure you can see the “BWH Virtual Rounding” team and the sub-channel labelled “________”. I’ve added all of you to this team.
4) Accept the calendar invite I will send to all of you to meet in Teams starting _______ morning.
Tomorrow morning your team will have their iPad delivered, and at the beginning of rounds you guys will log into Teams and join the meeting from there.
Things we can do for you during/after rounds:
- We will plan to join you on rounds and to run the list after rounds.
- Keep track of to-dos in the handoff
- Prep and sign progress notes
- Prep transfer notes and discharge summaries
For now we will not place orders or call consults.
We are more than happy to be flexible and adjust to whatever role might be most appropriate – we can touch base for a minute or two before rounds and also adjust as needed as we go.
Why are we doing this / why this structure:
We know that you all are very capable of doing your work. The reason for this is that we are preparing for a surge of COVID patients. The hospital is preparing for a scenario where in-hospital providers may need to spread wider and thinner across more teams, bringing in volunteer clinicians from other specialties to backfill the depth on each team. To be ready when things may be tighter, it is important that we use this time when staffing is not yet an imminent crisis to experiment with different workflows, even if this means doing some of the job that traditionally belongs to the onsite team. For that reason, we ask that for now that you give us a chance to work through the logistics of doing the tasks above for you virtually.
We cannot state enough how appreciative we are of your willingness to assist us in this effort – we think it will yield many benefits in the near-future, and we hope that we are helpful now as well!
Thanks again and please reach out at any point with questions!