{"id":2093,"date":"2016-12-06T12:56:48","date_gmt":"2016-12-06T20:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/industry\/blog\/uncategorized\/four-tips-engaging-patients-families-home-monitoring\/"},"modified":"2023-05-31T16:39:28","modified_gmt":"2023-05-31T23:39:28","slug":"four-tips-engaging-patients-families-home-monitoring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/industry\/blog\/healthcare\/2016\/12\/06\/four-tips-engaging-patients-families-home-monitoring\/","title":{"rendered":"Four tips for engaging patients and families in home monitoring"},"content":{"rendered":"
As nurses, we\u2019d always rather be proactive than reactive. We don\u2019t just want to wait for a phone call that something bad has happened to our patient. But in order to be proactive, we often need the help of our patients and their families, especially when home monitoring is part of the care plan.<\/p>\n
In my last blog, I wrote\u00a0about how parents\u2019 engagement in home monitoring has been vital to the success of our Cardiac High Acuity Monitoring Program (CHAMP)<\/a> for babies with single ventricle heart disease. I also discussed how treating parents as partners is our guiding principle for engaging them in using our CHAMP app<\/a>\u00a0during the high-risk period between their newborn\u2019s first and second surgeries.<\/p>\n As promised, here are my top tips for how to foster partnerships with those you seek to engage in home monitoring based on what we\u2019ve learned in our CHAMP program.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t just \u201ctell\u201d parents to use the CHAMP tools and send them on their way. We approach home-monitoring education as a two-way process. So we not only explain how to use the tools, we ask parents questions to understand what their life picture looks like. That way, we can tailor how we work with them depending on their specific needs.<\/p>\n For example, we see some families more in clinic because they can\u2019t be as thorough with home monitoring due to their circumstances. Whereas, other parents want us to save them a trip to the emergency room by looking at a video of their baby at three a.m.<\/p>\n Whatever their needs, we make sure the families know they can always ask us for help.<\/p>\n We never want parents to feel bad if they\u2019re not keeping up with every single step of their home monitoring. We know they\u2019re all doing the best they can and want the best for their child. They\u2019re not always going to be 100 percent adherent and that\u2019s okay.<\/p>\n If it feels like submitting three pieces of information each day is getting to be too much for them, I\u2019ll narrow it down and ask them to send just one thing when they\u2019re having a particularly tough day. And I help them understand that by doing so, I can take some pressure off their shoulders by helping to look after their baby using the information or video they share.<\/p>\n If an alert is generated by our home-monitoring app, we contact families right away 24 hours\/seven days a week. But even if there are no areas of concern, we send a weekly email to parents to provide them with an update. That way, they know we\u2019re looking at the information they\u2019re submitting\u2014and it\u2019s not just going into a vacuum. It reinforces that we\u2019re a team working together to watch over their baby through this critical time.<\/p>\n Prior to providing the CHAMP app to our patients\u2019 parents, our team took it home along with a fake baby for a weekend and went through all the steps we\u2019re asking parents to do. So when parents ask us which button to push to submit a video or question, we know because we\u2019ve done it ourselves.<\/p>\n I hope the above tips help you to engage people\u2014whether patients or patients\u2019 families or both\u2014to use the home monitoring tools you offer so that you can partner with them to improve their health and quality of life.<\/p>\n And please let the nurses\u2019 blog team know if you have any questions or comments\u2014or if you have your own patient or family engagement success story. You can reach them via email<\/a>, Facebook<\/a>, or Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here\u2019s what we\u2019ve learned about successful engagement from our Cardiac High Acuity Monitoring Program at Children\u2019s Mercy hospital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10068,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1507],"post_tag":[],"content-type":[1483],"coauthors":[1770],"class_list":["post-2093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-healthcare","content-type-thought-leadership"],"yoast_head":"\nFoster two-way communication<\/h2>\n
Allow for some give and take<\/h3>\n
Provide positive reinforcement<\/h3>\n
Practice using the tools yourself<\/h3>\n