You’re a busy hospital nurse, getting pulled in different directions, taking care of patients and helping other team members at every turn. In the middle of your shift, a key piece of electronic equipment stops working or a device isn’t responding the way it should. Suddenly, you can’t provide what your patient needs. What do you do? Become a technology troubleshooter on top of the many other roles you already fill?
Executives at UCHealth in Colorado decided this daily technology quandary was an untenable situation for nurses, and a burden they shouldn’t have to carry. It was leading to unnecessary stress and frustration and significantly reducing their time at the bedside. So leaders met with staff, assessed needs and designed a solution.
The system created a new position called the patient technology technician, a 24/7 liaison role that supports frontline nurses and certified nursing assistants. These problem-solving tech experts are on the scene whenever there is an issue with wearables, telemetry, safety view cameras, medication scanners and other devices, both at the bedside and via the system’s Virtual Health Center. With their help, nurses can get back to serving patients and working at the full scope of their licensure.
Registered nurse Amy Hassell, UCHealth’s chief nursing officer at the Virtual Health Center, outlined in an Advisory Board webinar how the new position has created time and cost savings while boosting staff satisfaction. She said the new role “augments nursing and also can be the liaison for all of the technology we are doing now and what we’re planning to do in the future.”
How the role operates
UCHealth piloted the PTT role at its Greeley Hospital and University of Colorado Hospital to learn how it would play out at medical centers of different sizes. Hassell said many of its current PTTs have come from areas outside human health care, such as information technology and veterinary practice. The new-hire training process typically takes about a month, depending on the individual.
PTTs are responsible for submitting and tracking repair tickets for broken devices, maintaining patient safety equipment, managing wearables, conducting daily device inventories, replacing nonfunctional items and helping with technology for patients who are transitioning home. They also can triage and manage noncritical alerts at the hospital. “One PTT covers about 72 acute care beds in the system,” Hassell noted.
Who it helps
Hassell said leadership has received an encouraging amount of positive feedback from nurses about the new role. One nursing staff member commented, “The presence of PTTs has greatly impacted my ability to provide excellent patient care. I no longer have to disrupt my patient care to answer phone calls from telemetry, and I feel so much more confident that my patient’s needs are being met. There is a tangible difference in ease of shift when PTTs are present vs. when they are not.” Another said, “I have been able to spend more quality time with my patients, which has made me feel like a better and safer nurse.”
Hassell also noted that 89% of nurses who responded to a survey said they would be more likely to accept a new position if they knew PTTs would be present on the unit.
Why it works
According to Hassell, evaluation data show significant benefits to the PTT program. For example, it resulted in a 60% reduction in Code Blue events related to telemetry, more than two hours per day in time saved by code and rapid response teams, and 19 hours per 12-hour shift given back to nursing staff across the system.
There have been savings of other kinds as well. The PTT program saves nurses thousands of physical steps per shift, and one medical campus alone saved $400,000 by eliminating the issue of lost telemetry boxes.
For these and many other reasons, the idea is catching on, even outside the 14-hospital, 34,000-employee UCHealth network. “We get constant interest in this program, and we know of several other health care systems that are now implementing their version of a PTT,” Hassell said.
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