LANSING – The implementation of virtual nursing programs in Michigan hospitals focuses on reducing nurse burnout.

Programs are being created and operated to combat shortages of health professionals by keeping nurses on staff and allowing them to connect with their patients virtually.

Several hospitals around the state have already introduced such programs.

Laura Appel, the Michigan Health & Hospital Association’s executive vice president, said there are 4,000 nursing slots that hospitals in the state would like to fill.

In addition to being stressful, the profession can be physically demanding. Nurses may be on their feet for long periods and may have to move and lift patients.

Jeff Breslin, a registered nurse at University of Michigan Health-Sparrow in Lansing and president of its Professional Employees Council, said the hospital is planning a virtual nurse program of its own.

He has been in the float pool his entire career, getting his assignments each morning and moving to multiple locations in the hospital.

“There will be a nurse that can connect to the rooms virtually,” said Breslin, a member of the board of directors of the Michigan Nurses Association, an Okemos-based union. “They will be set in a room someplace, off of the unit, where they will be able to monitor multiple patient rooms by TV monitor.”

“They’ll have the ability to click on and virtually enter those rooms so they can come up on the TV screen and talk to the patient and interact with the patient, see what the patient is doing, to help keep an eye on them,” he said.

Similarly, Munson Healthcare based in Traverse City began its Ask-A-Nurse program as a nurse hotline in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The hotline runs 24/7, 365 days a year, according to Bonnie Kruska, the Ask-A-Nurse chief operating officer for the Munson Physician Network.

She said Ask-A-Nurse serviced over 30,000 callers from all over the state in just one year.

The program lets nurses work from home to handle callers. Kruszka said the program combats nurse burnout by capturing “pre-call intention,” such as helping patients choose where to go for care.

Kruszka said nurses recommend a lower level of care than 40% of callers originally planned.

That reduces emergency department traffic, “ensuring that emergency services remain available for those who really need them,” said Kruszka. “It also saves the caller’s health care resources, connecting them with the right care in the right place.”

Breslin said Sparrow is pushing hard to ensure virtual nurses are still working on-site. He said allowing nurses to work from home may raise an array of questions.

“If you can do it from home, what’s to stop it from being done out of state or, potentially, even out of country?” Breslin said. “It gets very convoluted. From there, what standards would that virtual nurse be held to? Where do they need to be licensed? A whole host of other things.”

Differing virtual nursing programs mean different rules.

Kruszka said nurses participating from home must have a good WiFi connection.

“Although they might be tens or hundreds of miles apart, it goes into one call center, and it’s very seamless so a patient or a caller would never know that they were in a remote environment,” she said.

Breslin said one benefit of virtual nursing is the ability to keep experienced nurses with irreplaceable skills.

“We’ve got a lot of people that have gotten out of the profession because of the increased patient loads, not only with numbers, but the physical demand to take care of those patients,” Breslin said.

“They just don’t feel that they can keep up. They don’t feel that it’s worth the toll that it takes on them to stay at the bedside and continue to work,” he said.

In addition, experienced nurses often have more skills that newer employees do not have yet.

Breslin said Sparrow would like to have more experienced nurses participate in its trials.

“During the initial talks for the virtual nurse, we were looking to take some nurses who have been around longer, who may be struggling a little bit to keep up with the physical demands, and allow them to get into these positions where they would still be able to offer their knowledge, their expertise, their advice,” Breslin said.

Appel, the association executive, said Trinity Health Michigan based in Livonia has its own virtual nursing program called TogetherTeam Virtual Connected Care.

Trinity began its program over a year ago, and Appel said it has nurses who want to keep working and taking care of patients without the physicality of the job.

Appel said virtual nursing is only part of reducing nurse burnout.

“We want to make sure that we’re getting enough staff,” said Appel. “We want to make sure that we’re addressing people’s needs, if they’re facing difficulties, such as people who are new to the hospital and getting accustomed to the workflow and things like that.”

“There’s a lot of things that go into reducing the stressors of being a nurse,” said Appel.