NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Summerset Retirement Villages has rolled out a telenursing project to provide round the clock clinical support and improve resident care across six villages in the South Island.

The aged residential care provider has also adopted PainChek technology to improve pain assessment, especially for residents with dementia who may struggle to communicate.

Craig Moore, continuous improvement and change manager at Summerset Group, says the virtual care project was introduced to address the growing need for continuous clinical support in their facilities.

The traditional setup at Summerset, like many other aged care providers in New Zealand, involves care centre managers and clinical nurse leaders providing guidance, primarily during business hours. 

However, there was a real need for clinical leadership and decision-making support after-hours. This was particularly challenging for new or inexperienced nurses working shifts outside business hours, who often found themselves needing immediate guidance, but had no one to turn to.

"When registered nurses start with us, they are quickly given large amounts of responsibility and accountability very early on, that can be quite overwhelming," Moore says. 

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