For everyone's safety, no visitors were allowed—but that didn't mean there was no communication.
Prior to the pandemic, the number of “virtual patient visits” needed at Clara Maass Medical Center (CMMC) was minimal. COVID-19 changed all that fast. The sheer number of sick patients in combination with no-visitor policies, made virtual visits—conducted with the aid of cell phones or other devices—a top priority. The Patient Experience team at CMMC, with the help of nurses, has so far facilitated close to 1,000 such calls.
“One of the many unfortunate things about the pandemic was that our visitation rules had to change,” says Javier Alvarez, Director of Patient Experience. “It was super-important to all of us to be able to at least make virtual visits available.
We all took it very personally. In a few cases, it was the last chance families had to see their loved ones alive.” Even in less critical cases, when patients were unable to use their own devices, or unable to communicate at all, members of the Patient Experience Department set up an iPad to connect them with family, friends or clergy members.
“We’re in the room with them. We laugh with them, we cry with them,” Alvarez says. “Sometimes a nurse would give us a heads-up that a patient wasn’t doing well and might benefit from a visit, and we would proactively set up a call.”
Above and beyond
But the caregivers at CMMC wanted to do even more. Because many COVID-19 patients were so ill that they weren’t able to have a conversation, Niktha Kasinathan, MD, Internal Medicine physician, had an innovative idea: The medical center could provide a way for family members to share information about their loved ones online. And so the “Get to Know Me” page on the Clara Maass website was born. There, family members can tell the staff all kinds of things about their loved ones: what the patient’s nickname is, what their hobbies are, what kind of pets they have, things they like and dislike, and more. They can also upload family photos.
The Patient Experience Department downloads all the photos, laminates them and displays them at the patient’s bedside. The team also set up special drop-off stations outside the hospital for people who wanted to hand deliver photographs or special items like a blanket or pillow. Since nurses and physicians caring for COVID-19 patients often had limited time to speak to families on the phone, the Patient Experience Department found a creative response to that as well. Doctors and nurses from elsewhere in the hospital were recruited to monitor patients’ progress and call family members daily to update them and answer their questions. These medical professionals also encouraged family members to take advantage of the “Get to Know Me” process.
“Our staff is so compassionate and caring that to be able to have that information and to see those pictures means a lot to them,” Alvarez says. “This has been so valuable toward building relationships between the nurses, physicians, families and patients, and we’ll definitely keep going with it for all patients in the medical center,” he says. “When we saw all the benefits families and patients and our care teams were getting from it, how could we stop?”