Nurse Angel Bozard Spills the Tea on Virtual Nursing Done Right

Why do some virtual nursing programs give bedside nurses real relief while others barely make a dent? On this episode of HITea With Grace, where we spill the tea on HIT, Grace sits down with Angel Bozard, MSN, RN, CENP, CAVRN, Chief Nursing Officer at VirtuAlly, to talk about what separates the two.

A JAMA Network Open analysis of 880 bedside nurses found that 57% saw no drop in workload from virtual nursing, and 10% said it made their jobs harder. At MUSC, 87% of bedside nurses said the opposite. Angel explains that the difference comes down to how each program was built. Internal programs often draw on the same short-staffed nurse pool. External partners bring in new capacity.

Angel walks through her principles for virtual nursing success:

• Design programs with bedside nurses, not for them
• Set clear role boundaries, so virtual nurses take on admissions, discharges and patient education while bedside nurses focus on hands-on care
• Treat virtual nursing as a permanent clinical partner, not a staffing patch
• Prevent screen fatigue so burnout isn't just moved from the bedside to the virtual team
• Measure success beyond FTEs, including turnover, staff satisfaction and patient safety

She also shares why VirtuAlly keeps the "human in the lead" when using AI. Nurses check every piece of AI-generated data before it goes into a patient's chart. To close, Angel offers advice for women in healthcare and health IT, and tells us about the tea she brought and the story behind her mug.

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