A virtual nurse has been developed and studied at North-eastern University looking at a virtual nurse and exercise coach for patients. This is kind of looking at the picture kind of reminds me of the Wii Fit if any of you seen that. It has this like virtual personal trainers on the Wii Fit or one other similar program over on the X-Box for their connect system. You kind of have this virtual assistant that sees what you’re doing and looks at what your results are based on the program and then gives you encouragement, plans what you can do next and talks to you, interacts with you and kind of provide you a way to have some interaction while you’re doing something that you really don’t want people to watch you doing like exercise specially for patients that are unhappy with their image and how they look this might be a good tool.
The researchers actually found that the patients who interacted with the virtual nurse system and used that system to get their questions answered actually new more about their disease process, about their recovery process and it seemed to do better post-operatively and post hospitalization than patients who did not have access to the virtual nurse. The understanding is or the thought process is that this maybe because the patients could take their time. They don’t feel like if they don’t understand something that they are wasting the doctor’s time. They can get the virtual nurse to repeat a definition or repeat an explanation as many times as they want without feeling like they are wasting their time or getting hearing exasperation in someone’s voice from having spent extra time with some patients and I know we don’t do that, right? But patients sometimes imprint their own impressions of what they think we are feeling. We may be trying really hard to be patient and we may not be doing such a good job or the patient maybe misinterpreting our reactions.
This has some possibilities and kind of interesting with these two articles popped up right next to each other literally right next to each other when I was doing our search for the news items this week. They both kind of tweak my interest because I think there’s something to be said for this type of technology and maybe the robot nurse isn’t quite ready yet. Maybe they are misinterpreting what a robot nurse is supposed to actually do if it’s a nurse but the virtual nursing is right on track with educating the patient, providing information and encouragements for patients to become healthier so I’m all on board with it.
—–
This article has been featured in the news segment of the Nursing Show podcast episode Interview with Pain Management Nurse and Episode 200.
