The benefits and risks of provision of a hospital-wide highdefinition video conferencing virtual visiting service

ABSTRACT

Aims: Since the start of pandemic, Virtual visiting (VV) has become especially important due to visiting restrictions in hospital and telemedicine has become more evident. This project aimed to determine VV's impact on staff and family members affected by COVID-19 and its applicability in the future. Methods: This quality improvement pilot study was conducted 16/04/ 2020 till 30/11/2020, using Attend Anywhere (AA) as VV tool on iPads. In five dedicated COVID-19 wards, family members could request a 10- minutes VV through email run by a dedicated administrative staff. A Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) was described, and dedicated volunteers were recruited from a pool of existing hospital staff and physician associate students. An open-ended survey was emailed to staff and relatives following visits. The transcripts were coded into five themes and sub-themes and reviewed by two analysers independently. Thematic analysis was generated manually to form the conclusions. Results: There were 138 feedback responses, including 108 (78.3%) from relatives and 30 (21.7%) from staff). Twenty-seven codes assigned to the data were amalgamated into the five stated themes appreciative factors (129, 93.5%), organisational skills (44, 31.9%), palliative care (38, 27.5%), communication from staff (14, 10.1%), and VV issues (11, 7.9%). Overall, 131 (94.9%) of total responses had generally positive comments (111 from relatives while 20 from staff). Conclusion: Virtual Visiting delivered to the front line has worked effectively with excellent reliability in a secure cyber environment. Despite these barriers or weaknesses, VV can be potentially implemented in the hospital wards even beyond post-pandemic era.