NursiConnect and VR Nursing

Nursey Connect podcast discusses remote nursing. Guest William Kirkpatrick talks about his experience as a nurse and founder of a virtual reality nursing education company. He explains how he works from home and travels to institutions to implement the technology. Ava, the host, shares her experience as an inpatient virtual nurse, supporting bedside nurses with administrative tasks and heavy documentation. She discusses the benefits of virtual nursing and its potential to retain nurses in the profession. Both guests agree that working from home has become popular and important for the nursing workforce. Welcome to the Nursey Connect podcast. My name is Ava. I'm the Chief Executive and Founder here for the Remote Nurse Staffing Agency, Nursey Connect. And on the Nursey Connect podcast, we talk about all things remote nursing. Okay, today we're just gonna talk about nurses that are able to work from home and to create kind of a remote lifestyle for themselves. So today I have on the show Mr. William Kirkpatrick. You might've seen him on TikTok. I call him the VR guy. I don't know what anybody calls him. I call him the VR guy, but I'll let him introduce himself. Welcome to the show, William. Thank you so much, Ava. So yes, my name is Will Kirkpatrick. So I'm kind of a hybrid of all kinds of things, but my domain is nursing education. So just a little bit of background about me. Clinically, I've been a nurse for four years and most of that bedside experience has been in the ED and ICU. And then got an education in 2021 and started a virtual reality nursing education company. And then I grew a nursing education team around me and then grew a software programming team around me to make virtual reality simulations for nurses to use. And for our college, our main customer that we talk to is nursing schools, but then we also opened it up to individual nurses too. So that's just a little bit about me and I'm excited to be on this show with another nurse who works from home. And it's kind of cool to see that nurses are using their licenses in a completely different way than like the traditional way. So I'm excited to kind of dive deep into how our lives kind of go with working from home. Yeah, so I guess you can go first. Do you want to talk about like the day in a life, like kind of what you do working from home as a nurse? Sure, yeah. So typical day for me is, so my position with the company itself, so I founded the company in 2021. And at first when you start a company, just like every small business, you're pretty much wearing all the hats. So I did software development. So had a background in that, did the, created the product with my hands. Then of course quickly grew that because just like nursing, there's specialties in software development. Some people are good at design and some people are good at functionality. My skill set was more of just like design and everything like that. So I wasn't great at actually programming functionality. So that, I was doing that. I was building curriculum for the simulations for nursing schools to use. So that was pretty much my, the full like first year or two that was my life is constantly working from home. And I was still working PRN at the hospital at the bedside at that time, just because of course, you know, running off with no funds. This was just like stage one, like working, you know, getting an actual product out there. And then work from home. I mean, I would try to do like every, like eight hours straight of just, you know, building simulations. Then at night I would be up at, you know, working on building the curriculum around it. So everything like that. But now today I have a team around me. So typical day for me is I do work from home still, but I do travel more to institutions. So any school that, you know, partners with us, I'll travel to the school and then get to meet the faculty there and also get to meet the students. Cause we try to also like help colleges like implement the technology cause it's so brand new to people and very foreign. You know, even if you're tech savvy, virtual reality is still like kind of like a very brand new thing for a lot of people. So we go there and install the software on the headsets and orient all the students and orient all the faculty there. So that's pretty much my day to day. I'll have lots, I'll just have like virtual meetings most of the time. And then, you know, I'll travel when I need to. So, and then have meetings internally with our company to make sure our projects are on time too. So that's my day to day. Nothing clinically anymore, which I do miss it a little bit. So I'm excited to kind of dive into what, cause yours is still clinical, but it's still virtual too. Like it's work from home clinicals. So it's cool. Yeah, I was just about to ask you, how do you maintain licensure? Like when it comes down for licensure renewal, like how do you get your like time and your CE and everything? Yeah, that's a good question. So I haven't been doing it long enough where I had to worry about that. So I just renewed like last year. So I was still working at the bedside, you know, not too long ago. I think I stopped, I stopped working at the bedside last year in June. So it's almost been an entire year now. So I've been working from home completely since then. But what my plan is, is I do CU courses. So you do get CU credits for doing CU courses for nursing. So that's kind of the, and I have my MP license too. So I am PRN with being an SMP. So I do work, I can work at the clinic anytime I want, you know, depending on, so I keep my hours like, you know, at the clinic with that too. So that's the plan anyways. Well, see, I'm sure it'll be not as easy as it used to be. Yeah, I bet. As your business is growing and you're getting in contact with more nursing schools, you probably have to do more education on the technology. Like it's going to keep growing because it just is, it just is. Okay, I guess we can get into a little bit of what I do working from home. And I think I really love what you do because it kind of leaks into virtual nursing to me, or I love the innovation that surrounds nursing. So I guess I'll talk a little bit about what I do working remotely as a nurse. And I'll preface it by saying I absolutely love it. I enjoy it. That's why I created Nursing Connect. But, so what I do is called inpatient virtual nursing. Okay, this works because the patients, they all have cameras on top of their TVs in their hospital rooms. Okay, so with that being said, that's how all the care is delivered virtually. So the virtual nurse is responsible for things like the admission, the discharge, they'll do clinical rounding, there'll be the medication sign-off nurse, you know how you need to sign off for certain things, you can call the virtual nurse for that. They'll also do patient education, and they'll also be able to mentor nurses on the unit for like their clinical expertise. Those are like the six essential functions of the virtual nurse. Also with that being said, the whole idea of virtual nursing is to support the bedside nurse kind of in a different way, just to having another nurse do all of what we call the administrative tasks, the heavy documentation that surrounds nursing. While the EMR was something we saw as like a way to make documenting our patients easier, it's kind of become very cumbersome. Like we spend a lot of time in the EMR, like more than we do with our patients. So bringing in another nurse who's solely, you know, we're splitting our time between the EMR and the patients, but trying to help the bedside nurse kind of reclaim their time back with the patient at the bedside while we do all the heavy documentation. So virtual nurses, they work 12-hour shifts because they're solely there available for the bedside nurse. So there's day shift and night shift virtual nurses. Work three days a week, that's like my favorite part of it. I absolutely love working three days a week. And as far as the pay and everything, it's very similar to bedside nursing. I think it was like a couple dollars different, maybe two or three dollars different, but not a big change where I was like, oh no, I can't make the switch. But yeah, that's kind of what inpatient virtual nursing is. That's like the gist of it. And the plan and the goal is to put virtual nurses on every unit and every hospital everywhere. Like right now, she's being piloted on like high turnover units, like med surg and a little bit of ICU and in the ER, but they want to put this everywhere. And I think it's a great idea. I absolutely love it. I enjoy it because during the pandemic, I was looking at the bedside. I was like, this is not sustainable. I don't know how anybody can do this for more than 10 or 20 years. Like when you think about your career, but working at the bedside, I was like, that's not realistic for me. And I don't think it's realistic for a lot of nurses, but virtual nursing and that component, you might, we might be able to keep some nurses at the bedside with that. So that's what I do, fully remote. I don't go in ever. And I love it. That's exactly what I do at home. Oh, go ahead. I was just gonna comment. Just thinking about, you know, working from home in general has just been getting so popular since COVID. And like, just the fact that you can think of a nurse who, you know, if this wasn't, if this didn't exist, nurses would be leaving the bedside at the rate they still are. And they would just go into a completely different profession. And what you just mentioned, what you highlighted is that, you know, you had the experience where, you know, it just wasn't for you. It's not for a lot of people, unfortunately. And it wasn't for you, but you were able to get into another field of nursing and still do clinical things of nursing and work from home from that. And it's, I mean, this part of that career basically saved the nursing workforce because I can see why some people would probably say like, oh, this is gonna be terrible for nursing because everyone's gonna wanna work from home. But at the same time, this is not the type of nurses who like, yeah, I mean, I'm sure it's interesting to them. And, you know, there's gonna be probably more that are interested in doing virtual nursing eventually when this becomes a really popular thing. But these are the nurses that, I mean, you're gonna lose them if you don't have something like this. I mean, what's, I mean, you better at least, you know, have them available at a capacity of like being virtual because if you didn't have that, then what are you gonna have now? Nothing. So it's just gonna be, you know. Exactly, and I'll speak to your point about like nurses leaving to do virtual nursing. I was like, one of the big things that something I'm working for now, they were like, don't tell the nurse that you work from home. Please do not tell them that because the hospital wants to keep their nurses. But there is one hospital that might be doing it right. St. Louis, they have virtual nursing, but they have it with a bedside requirement. So the nurse has to work at least a shift at the bedside to be able to work virtually. I was like, that might be interesting because getting through your week, those three shifts in a row, sometimes it's rough. But knowing that you can take a shift and work it virtually and kind of step back from the work a little bit and then hop back into it the next shift and then have your four days off, that might keep nurses at the bedside. I don't know. Would you consider that something that you would do? Oh yeah. Oh my God. As a nurse? I mean, that's actually really brilliant because like that would be something that if the hospital systems have some sort of program like that where they've already partnered with a company that would help them get the technology and all that stuff. And help with the workforce too. Like that's, I mean, if I put my, like in my shoes, like, you know, I was burned out by like year two basically. You know, it's not easy work at the bedside. And like you mentioned too is, you know, these nurses that have been doing this for like 20, 30 years. I'm like, holy crap, how do you do this? It's hard. But yeah, if I were, I guarantee you that if that was a thing at the hospital I worked for, that I would be there longer. I mean, that's just, I think that's a very easy thing to say because. Yeah, just having that, because the standard or the model that used to work for bedside is just not working anymore. So kudos to the people that created Virtual Nursing. I really wish I would have thought of it first because it is so fire. I mean, the workflow, I mean, what really got me about Virtual Nursing was when they told us we could do the sign-off, you know, the sign-off for the people that's listening and don't know. There's certain drugs and medications at the hospital that has to be verified by two nurses. So for example, blood, heparin, some places insulin, some places electrolytes. And when you're working at the bedside, sometimes your friends, if you're running around, your coworkers are running around too. And that kind of stops up the workflow. You're sitting there waiting for somebody to come sign off with you because the unit is just, the workload is so heavy. But really opening up to have that virtual nurse, letting them know, hey, I'm coming to sign off or I need to sign off in room so-and-so. Like the other day, I signed off on some, I signed off on some FFPs for a patient that had an elevated INR. She called me, she was like, hey, can you meet me in room so-and-so? And I was like, yeah. Went in there, I switched the camera so I could see what the bag was reading. I read what was on the patient's armband and I read what was on the bag. And then I was able to remote to her EMR and put my credentials in there to say that we signed off. She was done, she hung this infusion. She got the vital signs and she watched the patient and everything. But it was able to keep that workflow going. It didn't get clogged up because she was waiting for somebody else because the workload on the unit is so demanding and the patients are very heavy. And when I say heavy, I mean the patient's workload is heavy, not like the actual patient. But yeah, I was like, that is awesome. And most of the time, virtual nurses are RNs because of that, because we do have to sign off on certain things. I had a lot of people, a lot of LPs ask if they can do this. Not yet, I wouldn't say LPs wouldn't be able to do it at all, but as far as I know, it's only reserved for RNs. But yeah, virtual nurses, it's cool. Yeah, that makes sense. And I mean, I can't even count how many times I've, especially if you have PPE in the room and you walk in there and in like two seconds, you're like, oh, I have to get this signed off. And then you're freaking waiting for like 10 minutes. Just look at it, you're like looking outside the room. Anybody here to help sign this off? I mean, those little things, I mean, especially new nurses, they don't, when they go into the field, like they're, naturally most people are like task oriented. Like what we see with our new nurses that go through our programs, is they're task oriented because they have to get comfortable in their own skin, like trying to make these decisions on the fly and everything. And it's just, they don't realize that there is so much little administrative, you can call it work, that is involved with the bedside, that like, whether it's literally getting a sign off, like 10 minutes, you don't have 10 minutes, like half the time. I mean, that 10 minutes is being taken out of your lunch every time you take a 10 minute little fiasco of like not doing anything. Like nursing is continuous work, so you are continuously using your brain the entire time. Like obviously people talk about like physically when you get home from the bedside, you're like, yeah, you're physically tired, but it's more mentally, you just don't even know like, like you just sit down and you're like, holy crap. You're using your brain, like your entire brain capacity the entire time. Because like, subconsciously, like when you're in one patient's room, you're thinking about the other patients and like what you have to do with them next, and you're trying to tie it in all together. Like, yeah, you don't have 10 minutes to waste at the bedside and like virtual nursing, I'm like a complete advocate for it. I mean, I really hope this takes off because I mean, it's going to save, I mean, I think it's a huge factor in the, you know, they all talk about 2030, about this is the projection of like where the bedside shortage is going to go and the numbers don't look great at all. And I think this is going to be a huge factor into actually preventing that because the nurses who are like, you know what, I am done with the bedside. I'm either like, I'm going to work from home for an insurance company. And then that's like a completely highly competitive thing. And also a lot of people that I know that actually did that are not happy with it. And a lot of people who leave the bedside too are always afraid of losing their clinical skills. Well, virtual nursing is the perfect thing because you're still critically thinking. You're basically working in the hospital but not like doing the hands-on stuff that was, you know, you're not having everything thrown on your shoulders. And you're like, your job is to help nurses, which you have to be at least passionate about if you're a nurse because you understand, you've been in the shoes, you know how hard the job is. You deserve thousands of rewards for doing it. And if you're a nurse who basically your job is, of course, yes, it's patient centered, you're supposed to help with patient outcomes, but really your job as a virtual nurse, it sounds to me right now, you can, you know, clarify this if I'm wrong, but it's like, your job is really, you're helping nurses more than the patients probably. But of course that nurse's motive is to help the patient. So you're indirectly helping the patient. So I don't know, I think it's really cool because I share that, you know, passion of like, I really want to help with the nursing turnover because like, I've just seen so many people go in and out of nursing and it's sad. Yeah, it is. And that's like virtual nursing, like as far as when I'm working on the floor with the nurses, I only talk to the nurses. I don't talk to any providers. I might call the pharmacy on discharge about a medication, but we're solely there for the nurses. Anything that they need that we can do virtually, even calling down to help with a patient's meal tray, like, oh, Mr. Johnson didn't get his tray, can you call down and make sure, like just taking that mental task off of them, like it makes such, that's such a big deal. And to talk, to turn back to your point about the administrative task and the burden, like just knowing, like for example, getting an admission. Okay, I think all the nurses, I don't know if I get this wrong, but with the admission, the thing we hate the worst is all them questions we have to ask the patient. Like, I mean, that's like 30 minutes that you're in there asking those questions. And that doesn't even include, like if the patient is decompensating on the transfer, they coming up from the ED, they need all these cares, like they need their medications fast, they're on a certain drip that needs to be maintained, like that doesn't even include that time. This is just you asking the questions. But with the virtual nurse, they offload that, like the admission process, as far as asking the questions, that's solely for the virtual nurse. Like I can sit, it takes about 30 minutes to do an admission. If we get maybe five or six, seven of those on the unit, like, I mean, that's probably like three hours worth of admission time that the nurses can go, like you said, take a lunch or like get off work earlier, get ready for a shift report. Like that's time saved, in my opinion. Now there are having some drawbacks about virtual nursing. While we think it's great, well, I still think it's great, I don't care, I think it's awesome. There has been like some concerns around like what happens to the ratio of the nurses that are on the floor with this virtual resource nurse, right? Do those ratios increase? Like what the workload look like? And as far as I've seen, the ratios have been the same. Like the virtual nurses, we're not even on the staffing sheet. Like it's just like, you're assigned this unit today and you can see all the nurses that you're working with. You can see how many patients they have. And so far it has stayed the same. So hopefully it'll remain the same. And if the ratio is increased, that just kind of, to me, defeats the purpose of virtual nursing. I don't know. But I guess I was saying that to say that like virtual nursing is coming and it's here to stay. And I feel like as it grows, like nurses have to be more educated on it and know that it's an option before they just stop being a nurse. Now I will say this, all virtual nurses don't work from home. At my, at the company I'm at, they have like a work from home group. So we're the work from home group. And then of course there's the nurses that work onsite. And onsite is like a hub. Like you're not actually in the hospital still. You're just like in a building with other nurses working, at working as virtual nurses, which is okay. Like some of those nurses, they really like it. They like, even though they're not working from home, they still like the fact they can still do virtual nursing in that capacity. So yeah, virtual nursing can be delivered in a lot of different ways. I prefer to work from home because it's just better there. I prefer to work from home. But yeah, the virtual nurse is, it's such a powerful tool. And to me, it just goes to show how powerful the nurse is because they didn't come out with virtual doctors to sit doctors at the bedside or virtual pharmacists to sit at the bedside. No, virtual, like nursing is the center of everything we do in the hospital. And having just that virtual resource to pull everything together as, that just shows how strong the work of the nurse is. Like, I don't know, I just really appreciate it. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I just, yeah, what, the whole idea of virtual nursing is amazing. And it's, I mean, like I said, I think it's gonna be a huge factor into like actually literally saving a portion of the nurses that are not going to be working nursing no matter what anyways, but then they found something like this, which is why I believe it's so important that, you know, someone like you, who is like advocating for educating, because, you know, the fear of what you already mentioned earlier is, you know, they're fearful that all the nurses are gonna start leaving the bedside and go to virtual nursing. Well, I mean, the truth is there's nurses out there that love the bedside. I mean, I mean, there's, there's, I couldn't imagine being outside of this. I have many friends that are just like, I love being a nurse here. I mean, you know, it just depends. And I don't think that's a fear that they should actually have. It's that these, the virtual nursing is something that needs to happen because the more virtual nurses you have, the more sustainable the job actually is at the bedside. Because the reason why people are leaving the bedside in the first place is because it's not a sustainable work environment for a lot of hospital systems. They're not supported. And nurses are wearing like thousands of hats every day. They're, they're electrician, they're a cafeteria worker, they're, they're this or that. They're like, they do like all kinds of stuff that shouldn't even be in their, their, their tasks for the day. And like taking, like you said, like the, literally the 10 minute, 10 minute time you're waiting for someone to literally sign off on a medication or doing an admission. Like I, guys, like one of my most annoying things I hated at the bedside was doing admissions. Okay. No one likes doing admissions. I've never really actually found a nurse who actually likes doing admissions because, I mean, I guess it depends on the patient, but like there's so much administrative stuff, as you mentioned. All the questions you have to ask, it takes at minimum 30 minutes. And now that's if the patient doesn't say a single word to you outside of answering your questions. Cause there's always something else too. You have to update the family. You have to get all the supplies in the room to prepare. You have to, of course, monitor the patient, get their medications into the medication list. You have to verify the medication's medication list. You talk to the pharmacist to verify those medications. I'm just like thinking of all the stuff I used to like. Right, right. Way more than the people don't realize. That's like the half of it. Yeah, like, and I really appreciate, like, cause what I used to think about is every time, before I even knew virtual nursing, I was looking at the bedside, I was like, somebody really needs to look at the day of the nurse when they clock in to the time they clock out. Because I said, I would say to myself, it's kind of ridiculous, the amount of tasks. It was kind of unrealistic for me to sit there and think I could do all that in 12 hours. Cause it was like, there's just no way, like, and I would beat myself up about it. But the more I went through it, I was like, it's just too much stuff. And then when I found out about virtual nursing, I was like, so my full-time job is to take the workload drawn aside to one person, take that workload, and now it's my full-time job that I do for 12 hours. That's how you know you had too much work. If that could be my full-time job now, I'm like, so I'm right now. Yeah, you're spending all 12 hours on it. Exactly, like, it was just- And just think about the quality, too, that gets, cause you know what gets sacrificed? It's the quality of the documentation, the quality that goes towards the patient. So, not only is this, I can see people who are outside of healthcare, have absolutely no idea what nurses do. They think nurses just wipe butts all day. They're probably looking at this and being like, oh, here we go again. Nurses complaining about their job. Exactly. And they're just like, oh, this, here they go, they're just being lazy, they wanna work from home and not actually provide good patient care, or something like that. You know, I've heard so many ignorant things like that. But it's, like you said, like, what gets sacrificed is the patient care. And what nurses are truly, like, I've, I mean, there's obviously nurses in there that are there for the money, like, selfishly. I mean, it's, no one's perfect. Like, there's not gonna be, just like how there's cops, there's good cops, there's bad cops. There's good nurses, there's bad nurses. But most of the good nurses, they're there to actually, cause they actually care. And it's like some, there is a piece of them that actually, like, enjoy, like I said, doing bedside work because they really love providing care to people in, like, a very desperate moment in their life. And they're making that moment just a little bit better, like, you know, literally saving lives. So, like, it's just, like, being at the bedside, you're doing that, but like, there's no support. And you're doing all these administrative tasks that takes you away from giving good patient care. So this virtual nurse is giving, is allowing better delivery of healthcare as well. That's my point with that. But I guess a lot of people, going off that point, is what is the typical day in the life for you since you're at home? Like, what is your schedule look like? So, like, run through, like, the whole, like, you know, like, I start work at this time. This is usually what I get assigned, or this is, like, the typical day in the morning. What is it, you know, do you get, like, an actual break? Do you get, like, an assigned break from your agency or whoever that is that coordinates that? So what's, like, the typical day in the life for you? Yeah, so like I said, I'm a day shift nurse. I work seven to seven. I usually huddle around 6.50 just to go over everybody's assignment, because usually you get a buddy virtual nurse that's available, because sometimes the units can get, like, overwhelmed with admissions and discharges. But you have a virtual or a buddy nurse that you could call on. And then once the night shift nurse comes off, I'll go over through her handoff and see if there's any pending admissions, anybody coming up from the emergency room, or anybody that didn't get discharged yesterday, but we already updated their stuff. They just need to have it reviewed. So we have, like, a note of all those things. And then I usually get assigned a unit, so a whole set of patients. So I'll be responsible for, like, maybe 24 patients, somewhere around there. And I will sign in. So usually we use Epic, so I'll sign into the Epic chat, and I'll message all the nurses. We'll get a staffing sheet. We'll see all the nurses that are working for the day, and I'll send them a message and let them know I'll be the virtual nurse working with you today. And then usually I'll go through the charts for a little bit. That only takes maybe, like, 15, 20 minutes. And then for the first part of the morning, it's kind of slow, like, very slow. It's not too much going on, and rounds don't start until kind of after the nurses do their med pass and everything, so like 10 o'clock. So right when 10 o'clock hits, like, that's when the doctor puts in the discharge orders. They start doing their rounds, and that's when I start making my rounds. Now, my rounds consist of, like, updating the patient on the plan of care. We'll do pain assessment. And then if I see that the doctor has ordered any new medication or something like that for the patient, I'll go ahead and give them some education on that, because that's also another function of the virtual nurse to do the education. So as I'm rounding on all the patients, sometimes I'll get orders, or I'll get messages that room so-and-so is ready for discharge. So I'll go, and I'll look over their after-visit summary, you know, the little packet they get. I'll go in and edit it and make sure everything is in there, follow-up appointments, medications, diet order, all that stuff, I'll make sure it's right. And then the bedside nurse, I'll let her know it's ready, and then she'll print it, and then I'll go in there and I'll review everything with the patient on the screen with them, so, like, I can, like, share my screen, and they'll have the packet in their hand. And I'll just go through everything, and then I'll make my little discharge note, and I'll keep on rounding. And that usually takes me up until about lunchtime. It kind of slows down a little bit again, but then since in the morning we did all those discharges, my afternoon is filled with, like, admissions. So then I'll start doing all the admin. I'll start back rounding again. We round, like, sometimes, like, three times a day. So I'll start back rounding again, and we usually get breaks. We get a 15, two 15s, and a 30, but sometimes, like I said, like, in the morning time, from, like, seven to, like, 10 o'clock, it's very slow. Sometimes I might get called for a sign-off or a skin check, but other than that, you know, it's not really much to do. I don't know how else to put it. It's not much to do until 10 a.m. when the doctors start doing their rounds and doing all that. And then, so I'll do all that, and I personally don't feel like I'm being micromanaged because virtual nursing, well, even bedside nursing, it's one of those things, like, when the admission comes to the floor, you don't have to do it right away. Like, you can just, like, do some of your other tasks. If the patient's unavailable, it's okay. You can come back to them. The discharge, they kind of want that done right away because they're trying to get patients in and out. And then the rounds, like, that's not something that has to be done, like, on the hour. It's just, if the patient's available, there's nobody in the room, you're doing your check-ins with them, like, just doing their safety checks. So it's very much like, I'm in control of my schedule for today. I do it at the times that I think I need to do it or it should be done. I do it in a timely manner. And then that'll take me all the way up until seven o'clock. I'll do my little handoff. I'll let the night shift nurse know what's going on on the unit, if there's any new admissions. And there's always admissions, new admissions in the emergency room when I'm leaving. It's like, all the admins also come up during shift change. So I'll let them know that. And then that's really my shift. Like, it's very, it's low stress, very low stress. I think the most exciting thing we do are the sign-offs. The patients either mess with the virtual nurse or they don't, like, as far as, like, the technology and everything. The nurses do use us a lot throughout the day. Yeah, I really like it. It's very, well, for me, anyway, I can pace myself. Like, I'm not stuck at the computer all day without shooting. Yeah. That's really much what I say. It's so nice, because one thing I do want to highlight, too, that you mentioned, in the very beginning, is that you work three days a week, 12-hour shifts. And, like, so many nurses love that schedule. And that's part of the reason why they like bedside so much, too, is because, like, I don't want to lose that, because it is super nice. Like, yeah, three days, you can deal with, like, whatever, you know, however bad that shift was, you know. You know, you still have four days off to recover. Exactly. So that's a good thing for, I think, a huge push, you know, for virtual nursing, because, or a huge advantage in the competition of the work from home as a nurse, because if you go work for, like, an insurance company, it's like you're nine to five, you know, doing, you know, work from home. And, but you're still, like, involved at the bedside, and you still get the interesting, you know, I'm sure your job's not, like, super boring. Like, I would find, like, doing, like, insurance or nursing informatics-type stuff is probably extremely boring. At least that's just my opinion. But, like, obviously, there's numbers of people out there that would probably like that, and, you know. But at least you get still some of the, like, you're still involved a little bit with the bedside. And like I said, like, for me, anyways, knowing that you're also helping nurses is just a huge, I don't know, that would be really fun. So I can imagine myself really enjoying that. Hey, yeah, because you, like you said earlier, you've been in the shoes, you know, like, if I try my best not to call them, like, if I see something and I feel like I can figure out myself or whatever, like, for example, like, if a mission comes up to the floor, the nurses usually have to call us and let us know. Like, no, you don't have to call me. You don't have to think about calling me. I'm already going into the room. You go ahead and you do something else, okay? Don't, because I know their phone is going off, like, 300 times a day with other people calling their phone. And I really only call them if there's, if I'm rounding and I'm like, oh, this patient is not responding to me. Like, I don't see any chest rise or fall. Like, that's when, like, when it's an emergency, that's when I will call. But other than that, I try not to call them. I think they prefer the text message anyway, or the epic chat anyway. I'll message them just because I know that phone, that phone. Oh my gosh. That phone. It's like instant anger. Revealing the phone, that phone is going off. Oh my gosh. From the time I was getting to work at seven in the morning, my phone was ringing. It was just ringing, ringing, ringing, ringing, ringing. And I'm like. Especially right in the morning. Oh my gosh. I was like, there's so many, there's so many little things that when I think back about when I was working at the bedside, it's just like, it wasn't even the job. It was like the little stuff. And then there was just absolutely no support around it. Yeah. I had to do everything. And then, like, the calls. Oh my gosh. Like, from 7 a.m. to like 9 a.m., that's my time to, like, look through the charts, get the meds ready. Please don't call me. It's like the busiest time of the day. Like, it's not like. That's right, you went to ICU. Yeah. I was like, from 7 to 9, you get to do what? From 7 to 9, I'm running around, like, med surge. I think that's why I messed up. I started the med surge. Yeah, med surge is rough. Like, I got floated a few times in med surge, and I'm gonna tell you right now, like, there's a reason why they're trying to tell new grads to go to med surge first. I mean, you can't keep it in. It is. I mean, it's such heavy work. Like, I'm like, like, what? It's the number of patients, too, because that's. Yeah. For me, like, I was in the ER at first, but it's so different because you're, yeah, you're like, the patients come in and out all the time, but you don't have to be with that person all day. You know, it's not like that responsibility doesn't fall on your shoulders the same if you're, like, having six patients in the med surge unit, because now you have them all day, and, you know, depending on how lucky you got with the assignment, you know, the people, and, you know, if you have a nurse aide or if you don't have one, like, there's some of the other external factors, that med surge is not for the weak. I mean, I just, and there's nurses that have been working for, like, 20 years in med surge. Like, how in the heck did you do that? I'm like, guys, I know. You said not having a CNA. Like, that just made me, like, I'm gonna work without a CNA. I'm turning right around, because now I have to do all the nursing duties and the CNA duties. Oh my gosh, that happened to me one time, and I was like, never again. We had 11 nurses, though. No aides. We had a total care in med surge that never happened. Oh my gosh. It's because the unit went from, it went to limb loss. Like, so all the patients, they lost a limb, some shape, form, or fashion. So nine times out of 10, they needed help getting up. So they were, like, very high assist patients. Like, they couldn't really do much by themselves. So they were always on the call bill. No, no issue of their own. Like, they needed our help, but we just didn't have the manpower to do that for every single patient and still do all the nursing responsibilities. I was like, this is so unsafe. I do not like it. Mm-mm. I do not like it at all. It was rough. Yeah, one question I have for you, too. I have a, I can probably count on the time, like, maybe, like, five or six times that I had shifts where I was just, like, I'd be walking out of the hospital and be like, I do not ever want to come back here again. It was those types of days where you just completely feel like you got trashed all day. And you'd even, like, get to, like, document how you want to and, you know, you're spending hours after you're actually done with patient care, still at the hospital. And was there a day for you? Like, I don't know if there's, like, a specific day or if there was, like, maybe a shift that you can remember that totally, like, opened your eyes to, like, okay, I need to go figure out something else. Because there was a few times for me, which I always had, even before I went into nursing, I was already planning on being a nurse practitioner, which I was able to do that, because that wasn't, my end goal wasn't RN, which, I mean, I, for the most part, liked it, but I just knew before I even went into nursing that wasn't gonna be my end goal. But, like, people who do have that as their end goal, I don't know if that was yours or not. You can, I don't think we talked about that before, if you were, like, planning on advancing or not, but was there a day where it was just, like, okay, there's something needs to happen, I can't do this anymore, I'm gonna go in, and then that's, is that how you fell into virtual nursing? Yeah, I actually, I started nursing, well, I started my first, like, hospital nursing job while I was pregnant, and it was when I came back from maternity leave, and I started trying to be a nurse and trying to be a mom and, like, just trying to keep myself together. I'm like, oh my gosh, I am exhausted. I was doing days and nights, and there was, I have a couple of shifts, because I was a focal nurse, which was good and bad, but being a focal nurse, I didn't know where I was gonna be at, I didn't know what type of patient I was gonna have, what type of nurse I was gonna work with, but I did work on orthotrauma, and that unit was kind of, like, so challenging for me, and I was like, oh my goodness. I was so overwhelmed with, like, the pain management and all the epidurals and the far risks. I'm just like, oh my gosh. Like you said, leaving the hospital, I was just like, oh my gosh, what am I doing? Ava, how did, you wanted to be here so bad, and, like, every time you get off work, you're just like, I don't wanna come back, and it was really my daughter that really pushed me out of the bedside. I was like, I need to find something that, 312 was good, but it was like, I was so tired, I can't come home and take care of my baby. Right, I was like, okay, this is too much for me, I need to find something that's a little bit more low-key, and I didn't even know inpatient virtual nursing was a thing, it just kind of like, you know how you find so many jobs on Indeed, they start recommending you jobs? That's how I found it. I was like, oh, Indeed smelled my desperation. Like, they're like, here you go, like, try this, and I was like, okay, I'll give it a try. Absolutely fell in love with it. I did not fully understand the job when I applied. I was like, I'm doing what all day? Like, for the patients, even in a job interview, they're like, oh, this is what we do? And I was like, oh, okay, emissions and discharges, that's cool. And then once they started doing the training, I was like, no, this kind of goes deeper than that. Like, even though that's the main job, like, it goes a little bit further, and I was like, oh, I like this. This is fire. This is fire, other nurses need to be doing it. Boom, Nursing Connect, here we are. Go ahead. I was gonna answer your other question. As far as, like, advancing, I did want to be a CRNA, so I did want to get in the ICU. I tried so hard to get in there. They're like, no, we're gonna put you in Med-Surg first. And I was like, okay. So, I honestly believe if I did not start Med-Surg first, I might still be on that CRNA track, but Med-Surg took me out of the hospital completely. I had never worked in at nobody's hospital. You know, I'm never gonna say never, because you never know what's gonna happen. I don't care how much money it is, what it costs, I don't care. I'm at that point. It only took me a year to get to that point. So, I was like, mm-mm, I'm not going back. But, yeah, right now, as far as advancing, they just came out with something, or they're working on something called the CAVRN. It's Certified Acute Care Virtual Nurse. It's a certification that you can get as a virtual nurse, and it's a certified nurse. So, if you're a virtual nurse, you're gonna get certified as a virtual nurse. It's a certification that you can get as a virtual nurse. Finally, I've been waiting for a certification like that, and I was like, okay, I'm gonna get that, and I'm gonna also create my own, because nurses always ask me, they ask me the type of questions you're asking me about inpatient virtual nursing. And what I'm telling you guys is just the surface of it. There's more that goes into it. So, I am gonna create a course around how to be an inpatient virtual nurse. It's similar to bedside nursing. It's just a technology piece. It's very easy, though. It's just a technology piece, and then the etiquette that goes around interacting with the patient, all that stuff. But that's something I'm creating for Nursing Connect as a CE course that nurses can get and take and put on their resume and try to get a remote or inpatient virtual nursing job. That's where I'm at right now as far as like, you can't think. That's nice, yeah. Yeah, once again, what a unique way to use your license, because most people think everything, when most people think about nurses, it has to be at the bedside. I think schools, they're kind of motivated to get nurses to thinking about the bedside only, which, I mean, I get it. You know, I mean, that's where most of the nurses are in numbers, and it's where most of the nurses are definitely needed. But yeah, I think that's sweet, because yeah, this profession's only gonna grow. Like what you're talking about with inpatient virtual nursing, and then it makes sense to have certifications, because it's kind of, from what you're describing to me, it is very similar to like, you know, if you've worked at bedside, you shouldn't have much of a problem transitioning to a job like you just described. Very smooth transition, yeah. Yeah, but then there's also the opportunity for, I don't see why this is a bad thing to let new grads do. Especially, I mean, because here we are again with that. What'd you say? I can let them go into ICU though, it's fine. Yeah. It's fine. Everything's fine. Yeah, I would say like probably ICU. I mean, I've been floated in med surge. I would say ICU, and it's all about like who you are as a person, how you like to work. But I would say ICU is probably easier because you'll have two people to worry about instead of six or, you know, seven or other hospitals like this, really throw whoever they want at you. Exactly. But going back to that, like, I don't see how it's a bad thing, because I can already see how people are going to push back against this, like the older generation of nurses. Oh, yeah. I can see how this is probably going to be something that's not welcomed at first, just like how me with my technology. People look at my tech, like Facebook, you know, that's why older people on Facebook, when I post something about VR nursing training on Facebook, they all freak out. They all comment, it's like, this is not the same thing. This is not how, you know, this should not be like, you know, how we should train, which, you know, virtual reality is never going to replace how you train, it's to supplement and help nurses be more prepared. Exactly. But people get that wrong, but I can see how the same thing with your case. Oh, absolutely. It's good. I'm sure you probably already hear it, like the older generation nurses not saying that they're, like, you know, it's just naturally, people when they do something for so long, they knew stuff that comes up like this, they don't necessarily agree with it, because, you know, things need to stay the same. But from what we're looking at with the numbers, with nursing shortage, it's, I mean, people don't realize how serious it actually is looking. Like, I don't remember the exact numbers, but 2030, by like the projections they're making, like the bedside is going to be in a pretty severe, like it's already not in a great situation. And by the way, guys, we don't have a nursing shortage, we have a nursing bedside shortage, which tells you what? That people don't want to work at the bedside. And there's enough nurses to supply it. And I'm not saying, like I said, there's people that love the bedside, but there is nothing sustainable at the bedside right now, unless they do what they're supposed to and change up how this should be implemented, how nurses should be treated in the workplace. They need to change the workplace. But one of those things that they can help change the workplace is by additionally hiring virtual nurses, like you mentioned. And I think that's a huge push. If anything, out of all the solutions that we have out there, I think inpatient virtual nursing is one of the bigger solutions because we're not relying on these silly robots that are carrying water back and forth to your patient. Oh, great, thank you. We're spending thousands and thousands of dollars on technology, a machine that walks two miles per hour, bringing water back and forth to your patient. I've seen some hospitals doing that. Well, why don't you invest in actually getting virtual nurses? There's some plenty of people out there to help you. And I guarantee it that those 300,000 nurses that are not at the bedside would consider a job like you just mentioned. And that would help the nurses that are wanting to work at the bedside. So, that's their passion. So, I mean, that's something I would say to somebody who's maybe gonna push back on that, which I get it. But everything new that gets pushed back on at first. Yeah, it does. Like the main thing, like the main pushback is, you can't replace the bedside nurse, virtual nurses. They can't do everything that the bedside nurse does. Well, duh, like we're not there. Like we're not just on site. How are virtual nurses gonna be in the code? We're not. How are virtual nurses gonna sign up my patient? We're not. The bedside nurse is still there. And when I say we do the admission assessment on TikTok, oh my gosh. So, y'all admit the patient without the nurse being, how y'all do all the skin assessment, everything? I'm like, the nurse is still there. I think the virtual nurse is like the VA or virtual assistant to the bedside nurse. Whatever they need to be documented, they need somebody called, it's called a family member. You need me to get the advanced directive. Like, I can do that. You do all the physical things, like all of that. But the virtual nurse is just there to do the virtual things. No, it just go over people's head like that. I don't know. Would they take the virtual nurse like, the virtual is the key word. Yeah, anytime I think people will understand. But like, the number one complaint that nurses have at the bedside is not having enough time to actually do their job, which is patient care. They have to worry about, like we talked about earlier, charting, you know, waiting 10 minutes just to get a check off. For real. Or talking with family members here and there and talking with doctors and talking with the PT and talking with the OT and talking with speech therapists. And here we go with all the things, case manager. That's hours of work every day, if you don't realize that. And like you said, there's a reason why you have a full job or full task ahead of your day, because there's, just imagine, that's all being put on the same worker who's supposed to be providing patient care. And they can't do that. That's the number one complaint that nurses have about the workplace. So this is the number one solution to that, is what you have, is inpatient virtual nursing. Because this is taking care of the number one issue, and that is giving nurses back their time to actually provide the care they need to, and safely, by the way. Yeah. Because the public should be, there's so much pushback, I hate seeing it, but there's so much pushback, like nurses striking, which, you know, whatever, you can argue like whether they're doing it, you know, they're striking and they're not taking care of patients, that's not necessarily the greatest look, right? They're striking against the hospital. But at the same time, there has to be, sometimes there has to be movements like that, because these nurses are seeing exactly what's happening to their people in their communities, and that's negligence a lot of the time. Yeah, and then we're responsible for that as well. Exactly, and then we're the ones being pushed into, you know, we hear these cases like, the nurse who gave Vecoranium when it should have been first said. These are the types of reasons, not saying, okay, that case, whatever, that has to be looked into. That's an example of like the first impression of that was what she was overstat, overwhelmed, over. Yeah, the system. Yeah, and that's just the number one thing is we need to give nurses back their time, because not only is the nurses at risk for just the turnover is terrible, people are at risk. My child is six years old, could go to the hospital, and I would want them to go to a hospital that has more nurses. That's the number one, like, that's the number one statistic that is going to either be a good hospital or a bad hospital. Yeah. Nurses are the delivery of healthcare. I'm like talking to people who are like, have no idea about healthcare. Yes. They watch Grey's Anatomy and they think doctors do everything. They really don't, though. What really surprised me was one time the doctor asked me to give one of my patients thalatic, and you know, I was a new nurse, so I asked, I'm like, why you can't do it? Like, I'm about to do something. And he was like, see, I can only order, and he said, but I cannot administer. I said, for real? He was like, yeah. I was like, that's wild. I can make you order as many medications as you want. He was like, yeah, but I can't take them out to PIXIS, or yeah, the OmniCell, whichever one it is, like you guys do. Like, I don't even have access to that. I was like, yo, so you have to depend on me for everything? Like, I didn't know that. I had no idea they could only order and not administer. Had no idea. Yeah, it's so interesting you mention that, because like, when I was going through nursing school, like, I really don't feel like there's a lot of, it's really hard to actually put your foot on, like, what exactly nurses do. Like, even when you're in nursing school, like, you're learning the content, like the pathophysiology, all that stuff, but even when you go to clinicals, you're not quite sure, like, you don't get to see, like, the full, you don't step in the shoes of being the nurse, and then figuring out, like, everything you do. You're watching the task-oriented stuff, which is what, kind of the foundation. But yeah, like, even after I graduate, I was like, you know, like, what do we make? You know, like, we're learning, like, what doctors, why they make their decisions, because, you know, we're the last defense. We need to know why, you know, is this medication appropriate for this patient? Well, it's on us if we give it. No matter what, it's a doctor's message. It's not up to somebody else, but we need to know to understand every medication that's being given, too. But, yeah, just going back on that, it's just, doctors, of course, are, I would say, the pinnacle of healthcare, obviously, because they make all the decisions. They're, they need to have the medical knowledge, but you can't have, you can't have a doctor without a nurse. The doctor is not, there's the decision-making, and then there's the delivery. The doctor orders, so you order your, let's think of it like an Amazon order. You order your package, so the doctor orders the package for you. This is what you need, okay? But the delivery driver is the nurse. Now, if you have a terrible delivery driver, who has absolutely no idea where they're going, or they're just, you know, like, or if they're FedEx, where they slam your package down on your doorstep and completely ruin it, then your order, your doctor's order, is not going to be correctly given, and then there you go, there's your medical error. Number one killer in hospitals right now is medical errors. So, I think, I've been trying to put that message out there for so many people, especially who are not in healthcare, and even for the new nurses, is that the nurses are the pinnacle, or like the number one statistic on how safe a hospital is. I'm going to take my kid to a hospital that has more support for the nurses than I would, say, for the doctors. The doctors, of course, are in terrible healthcare environments, too. Now, I don't know the specifics to that, but I do know the specifics to nursing, so that's why I stay in my lane with that. But, yeah, that's, I mean, you can have great orders all you want, but if they're not delivered correctly, then you're not going to have good healthcare. So, I do, like, this is going to bring awareness. I think you're, indirectly, I think inpatient versus nursing is going to bring awareness to that, because then there's going to be an outrage once it's finally completely, you can say, commercialized, where it's a huge thing now, like every hospital has it. There's going to be a few, like, oh, why can't these nurses just work at the bedside? You know? It's always going to be something. It's always going to be something, but hopefully it kind of spreads awareness to, like, how healthcare actually works, because that's what really the problem is. People don't know until they actually get in the hospital, because, I mean, from what I see is, like, most people who actually do get out of the hospital, you know, recover from some sort of illness or injury, they're always saying the nurses were the most important thing. The nurses. The doctors are in your room for maybe five minutes a day, depending on how sick you are. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. And then the nurses are there with you 24 hours a day. Around the clock, yeah. Around the clock. Yeah, so that's my rant. It's powerful. Nursing is very powerful. And like you said, you can't have a doctor without a nurse, but you can have a nurse without a doctor. Just know that, okay? Yeah. Without a doctor. That's how powerful nursing is. And I enjoy the profession. I enjoy working from home. Even though I didn't enjoy bedside, I enjoyed the experience, because it led me to this. And it led us to being here in this moment. So I can't just say I hate bedside completely, but me going back is a no. But yeah, it led me to this moment and this space, so I really appreciate it for that. And I don't know. Do you have any closing thoughts? No, I mean, it's super exciting. I'm definitely excited to watch your business grow too, because, yeah, it's just gonna be a huge push. And I hope that I see you, like, yeah, I'm knowing you now in the early stages. I hope I see you, like, you know, when this all becomes a huge thing, that you're gonna be, like, the spokesperson for it all. I'm not even ready for it all, but... Because what makes it even better is you're a nurse. So same thing with my company too, is that we have competitors that do virtual reality simulations, but none of them are actually nursing founders. Nurses know best for nurses. They do. That's fact. We know what's up. We know. We've been it. We've lived it. We went through the training. You got all the letters behind your name. I got all the letters. We know this stuff better than anybody that can sell you anything, okay? Nurses know. All right, Will. Well, can you tell the people where they can find you at, where they can find you on social media? Yeah, so we are known as Corsetta Nursing on social media. So it's like Cors, and then T-A. So Cors, T-A, Corsetta Nursing. So on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. TikTok and YouTube is our highest engaged one. So if you guys want to watch us there, we do courses for nursing students. So making every topic easier for you. So, you know, learning about diabetes and what you need to know for your nursing school exams and NCLEX. So we do individual support and tutoring for that. We have a membership tutoring program that you get to actually connect with actual nursing educators. So it's not just an application you're interacting with and all the notes and all the videos. You're actually interacting with a human being and helping you get prepared for your next exam. And with that is our virtual reality. So it's extremely innovative. Not everybody has a headset yet, but eventually everyone will. So you can find me on Corsetta Nursing and our actual company name is Tactile VR. So our website, you can find us on tactilevr.com and you can look through everything there. So that's where you guys can find us if you're interested. I'll put information linked in the description where you can find him on his social media links. Again, my name is Ava. I'm the chief executive and founder of the remote nurse staffing agency, Nursing Connect. You can learn more about our staffing agency by clicking on nursingconnect.com linked in the show notes. Again, thank you so much for tuning in and listening, you guys. We'll see you in the next one. We're gonna move on to the next question. Yeah. I can't believe that. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. Yeah. I can't believe it. I love it. Yeah. Yeah.