Remote Nursing Jobs Expand

alling all nurses dreaming about job change. And by that, I mean the kind that lets you skip the scrubs and the stressful commute. With so many remote nursing jobs available today, nursing careers have expanded in roles ranging from telemedicine to business or teaching.

No doubt, telemedicine certainly opened the door to more remote virtual nursing jobs. For instance, Oregon Health State University’s telemedicine program captured about 13,000 telehealth visits in April 2020, up from a mere 1,100 visits in February 2020, according to its website. Demand for telemedicine services stems from many converging factors. These include the rapid expansion of healthcare technology, social distancing, and growing disparities affecting patients’ access to health care. Rural communities are especially affected by disparities, according to the Rural Health Information Hub.

After graduate school, Stecker worked for a health system that also operated an insurance branch with telephone nurse triage. The concept of telephone nurse triage evolved with the emergence of video technology and synchronous appointments, she said. “At that time, RNs, LPNs, and LVNs could do triage over the phone,” said Stecker. “Now, big hospital systems with their own insurance plans are doing nursing triage, but you’re doing more than nursing triage and talking over the phone because you can visualize the patient with video.” The Agency for Healthcare Research and Policy published a report reviewing pre-COVID-19 studies about remote ICUs for critical coverage during weekends and nights. Results suggest lower inpatient and ICU mortality rates. Granted, data collection for “adverse events” was significantly limited, with just one study out of 21 revealing that finding. What we do know is that patients like the idea of remote visits. About 80% of patients reported satisfaction with telehealth visits, according to a literature review of academic and clinical studies published by the American Telemedicine Association, in their “Patient Satisfaction in Virtual Care” report. In addition, a small NIH study suggests that nurses report job satisfaction working in remote telehealth.