NHPCO NewsLine Summer 2020 - 22

continued

Our capacity to have team meetings and
larger division meetings has grown
immensely.
support groups online, there are
caregiver resilience groups that I
provide for patients and
caregivers. I also provide this for
clinicians, and I would say that this
has increased substantially since
COVID. So, in addition to what I
was already doing, which was
teaching residents or primary
palliative care to neurologists in
different parts of the state or
other states, now I am doing brief
resilience trainings to caregivers in
San Diego, which is five hours
away from me. I mention that
because it is a productive way
that we can use telemedicine.
We can support our teams and
the people that we work with.
Our capacity to have team
meetings and larger division
meetings has grown immensely.
And there is great humor, care,
kindness, and variety in what we
do together. One of our
physicians said we need to do a
flash-mob dance about how you
wash your hands. And she led this
thing and it was just fun. God
gave people a chance to laugh
right in the middle of everything
that is happening.
I mentioned that as a fun aside
but the fact is that we can use

22

Newsline / Summer 2020

telemedicine in so many ways. I
am very grateful that we have it.

Kathryn Walker, PharmD,
BCPS, CPE
Kathryn Walker, is a senior clinical
director of palliative care at
MedStar Health and Associate
Professor at University of
Maryland School of Pharmacy.
As a pharmacist and health
system leader, I created the Patch
Telehealth Program (Palliative
Telehealth Connecting to Home)
and we have been doing
community telehealth for about
six years. Our team is made up of
a full-time nurse coordinator, four
social workers, three pharmacists,
a nurse practitioner, and a
medical director.

Our patients are often in their
mid-70s. A lot of people say age is
a barrier in utilizing telehealth,
but I would point you to a handful
of 90-year-olds who are rocking it
out on their tablets at home.
The biggest consideration
regarding telehealth would be the
platform. Our platform consists
of a robust user-friendly platform
where we have remote patient
monitoring. We drop-ship to our
patients a kit that includes a
Bluetooth enabled blood pressure
cuff, scale, pulse oximetry
monitor depending on what they
need, and very user-friendly
education modules and surveys.
Their medication list is also in the
platform where they can monitor,
and we can monitor - not only
their vital signs but also their
medication use.
There is an important piece that
pharmacists pick up over video,
and our social work colleagues pick
up different elements, that all goes
into my medication
recommendations and vice versa
for social work assessments. A lot
of times it takes the team rounding
every week to put all those pieces
together for the best care plan.
The COVID piece has been
different for us as we have had to
maintain trust with our patients.
And that means making sure a
team member is "showing up" and
keeping our visit cadence going.
The face-to-face connection on
video has been important. The
self-efficacy of patients doing
video visits is awesome.
Remembering to praise them,
NHPCO NewsLine Summer 2020

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