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Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Hospital in Indianapolis has had on-demand, interactive video in patient rooms since opening in 2013. But for the first two years, the facility that replaced the public Wishard Memorial Hospital was underutilizing the Tigr AP system, from TeleHealth Services, Raleigh, North Carolina.
“We weren’t using it to its full capacity or with any validation component,” said Toni Galyan, staff development coordinator at the hospital’s parent organization, Eskenazi Health.
Then, in October, Eskenazi launched Baby Boot Camp to deliver patient education to new mothers — and test for knowledge retention — over Tigr. By all measures, it’s been a big improvement over the former method of educating new moms by having nurses teach live classes.
“Patient satisfaction wasn’t great with the class,” said Galyan, who directs Baby Boot Camp. “It was also a nurse dissatisfier.” Nurses often struggled with language barriers and with the time they needed to teach classes, Galyan explained.
The hospital’s Family Beginnings team identified several barriers to delivering education to new mothers, Galyan said. These included the aforementioned language issues, as well as staff restraints, including a surge in births in central Indiana that reduced the amount of time nurses had with each mom.
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Baby Boot Camp had immediate uptake, with a 75 percent utilization rate for the first month. “This showed us that patients are choosing that as their option,” rather than “getting lectured” by a bedside nurse,” Galyan said.
Baby Boot Camp now is available in both English and Spanish, which are the two languages the video provider, the Newborn Channel, currently offers. “We may add more if the vendor comes up with more,” Galyan said.
Eskenazi Health produced the validation questions to test patient knowledge after viewing the content. The quiz is administered by video as well, with new mothers using the bedside pillow speaker and room telephone to key in their answers. “There was some evidence to prove that retention and application increased with video,” Galyan reported.
The hospital now is saving about $16,000 a year by not having to pull nurses away to teach live classes, and both patient and staff satisfaction are up.
And there are plans to expand the program. “There has been some discussion that videos could and should be launched in the clinics,” said Galyan. Eventually, Eskenazi also wants to build a module for families in the neonatal intensive care unit. “This is a still-evolving project,” Galyan said.
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