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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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GetWellNetwork connects patients, caregivers

Legacy interactive platform offers medical information, cure for boredom

By , Columbian Health Reporter
Published:
4 Photos
Kimberly Holiday-Coleman, a patient at Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center, pulls up a relaxing video she found using new hospital technology during a Thursday visit with hospital employee Kacia Gauthier. Legacy launched the new interactive patient care platform called GetWellNetwork last Monday.
Kimberly Holiday-Coleman, a patient at Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center, pulls up a relaxing video she found using new hospital technology during a Thursday visit with hospital employee Kacia Gauthier. Legacy launched the new interactive patient care platform called GetWellNetwork last Monday. (Photos by Natalie Behring/ The Columbian) Photo Gallery

Kimberly Holiday-Coleman and her husband enjoyed an impromptu date night Wednesday.

The Vancouver couple sat before a glowing fire, the sound of crackling wood filling the room, and enjoyed room service.

The setting wasn’t exactly ideal, though.

Holiday-Coleman, 47, was recovering from emergency surgery at Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center. The room service was her hospital-issued meal, and the fire was courtesy of a YouTube video playing on the TV. But the quiet evening with her husband did allow Holiday-Coleman to relax and forget about the pain she was experiencing.

Holiday-Coleman spent much of her week in the hospital relaxing to YouTube videos and watching movies. She also passed the time by watching brief educational videos about her surgery and recovery, and learning about her newly prescribed medications.

She did all of it through a new interactive patient care platform Legacy launched last week called GetWellNetwork.

“It’s a really neat system,” Holiday-Coleman said.

The GetWellNetwork not only gives patients more entertainment platforms — previously, the hospital only offered cable TV — but it also allows patients to become more engaged in their care and treatment, said Kacia Gauthier, a neonatal intensive-care unit, or NICU, nurse manager who coordinated the GetWell installation.

“It basically allows the patient to have more control,” Gauthier said. “The patient can interact with it, but the caregivers can also assign things to the patient.”

For example, caregivers can assign various educational videos to patients. Those videos might include tutorials on fall prevention, pain management or patient safety, she said. The patient gets a prompt that a video has been assigned and can watch it at their leisure, Gauthier said.

After the patient watches the video, the provider is notified through the patient’s electronic medical record. The patient is also able to send questions to the provider if they don’t understand something in the video, Gauthier said.

The videos were much more appealing to Holiday-Coleman than the stack of papers she received when she first arrived at the hospital. She’s watched several videos, but the paper handouts have stayed in her bag by the door.

“I haven’t had the wherewithal to deal with it,” Holiday-Coleman said. “I haven’t read a piece of paper. When I go home, I can pilfer through it.”

The system also allows patients to get immediate feedback to hospital staff. If a patient wants their bathroom cleaned, for example, they can send a request directly to housekeeping. Or if a patient’s meal fails to show up, or isn’t correct, they can message nutrition services directly, Gauthier said.

That allows the patient to go directly to the source, rather than paging a nurse and asking the nurse to contact the appropriate person, Gauthier said.

“It’s not hitting that call light and waiting,” she said. “It’s a lot more immediate.”

Legacy hadn’t yet launched the new network when Holiday-Coleman checked into the hospital on Nov. 11. After her surgery, Holiday-Coleman’s only entertainment option was to watch TV. The only thing she wanted to do was watch movies.

So she was thrilled to find on-demand movies available when GetWell launched Nov. 16.

“It feels like you’re on an island — 24 hours a day alone, in this bed,” Holiday-Coleman said. “This system connected me to the world.”

Patients navigate the system with a lightweight keyboard or with their bedside remote. And while Holiday-Coleman considers herself somewhat computer savvy, she was a little intimidated by the system at first. She quickly realized, though, that the system was user-friendly and easy to navigate.

For Holiday-Coleman, the biggest benefit was that the system gave her a way to distract herself from the pain and boredom of being hospitalized.

“It really helped a ton,” Holiday-Coleman said. “It’s made the stay pleasant.”

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Columbian Health Reporter