Abstract
Objectives: With the evolving COVID-19 pandemic and the emphasis on social distancing to decrease the spread of SARS-CoV-2 among healthcare workers (HCWs), our pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) piloted the integration of Zoom meetings into clinical rounds. We aimed to explore the feasibility of these hybrid virtual and physical clinical rounds for PICU patients.Design: Mixed quantitative and qualitative deductive thematic content analysis of narrative responses.Setting: PICU, single tertiary-care academic center.Participants: Multidisciplinary PICU HCWs.Interventions: Integration of Zoom meeting into clinical daily PICU rounds.Measurements: For the quantitative part, we gathered the details of daily PICU hybrid rounds in terms of times, number of HCWs, and type of files shared through Zoom. For the qualitative part, open-ended questions were used.Main Results: The physical round took statistically significantly less time (34.68 ± 14.842 min) as compared with the Zoom round (72.45 ± 22.59 min), p < 0.001. The most shared component in the virtual round was chest X-rays (93.5%). Thirty-one HCWs participated in focus group discussions and were included in the analysis. Some of the HCWs' perceived advantages of the hybrid rounds were enabling multidisciplinary discussions, fewer round interruptions, and practicality of virtual discussions. The perceived challenges were the difficulty of the bedside nurse attending the virtual round, decreased teaching opportunities for the trainees, and decreased interactions among the team members, especially if video streaming was not utilized.Conclusions: Multidisciplinary hybrid virtual and physical clinical rounds in the PICU were perceived as feasible by HCWs. The virtual rounds decreased the physical contact between the HCWs, which could decrease the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 spread among the treating team. Still, several components of the hybrid round should be optimized to facilitate the virtual team-members' interactions and enhance the teaching experience.
Highlights
SARS-CoV-2 infections continue to surge with more than 140 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, including more than 2 million deaths, as reported to the World Health Organization [1]
With the second and third waves surging in multiple countries and several SARS-CoV-2 variants posing more challenges, the healthcare system needs more innovations to mitigate the surge in cases and protect the healthcare workers (HCWs) on the front lines [2, 3]
Their structure consisted of starting the daily clinical round with a Zoom R meeting involving all the members of the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), including the physicians, bedside nurses, pharmacist, dietician, respiratory therapist, and social worker
Summary
SARS-CoV-2 infections continue to surge with more than 140 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, including more than 2 million deaths, as reported to the World Health Organization [1]. With the second and third waves surging in multiple countries and several SARS-CoV-2 variants posing more challenges, the healthcare system needs more innovations to mitigate the surge in cases and protect the healthcare workers (HCWs) on the front lines [2, 3]. Previous research shows that most activities on attending rounds do not need to take place at the bedside [5]. Another important aspect of these bedside rounds is the clinical teaching and multidisciplinary interactions that are vital to the ongoing process of perfecting the healthcare professionals of the future with better utilization of healthcare resources, which does not necessarily require close gathering at the bedside [6]
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