Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this group.
I am a regional nurse practising in northern Labrador. I have been practising in Labrador for 35 years. I am a master's-prepared nurse and have a great deal of work experience in northern and isolated communities.
Regional nurses, as you are probably aware, work within an advanced scope of practice very similar to what nurse practitioners work as well. We work in isolated locations where there is no physician. The physician is at the end of a telephone, or, most recently, at the end of video conference telerobotics. I'm here to champion the issue of telerobotics in isolated locations.
In northern Labrador over the last probably 12 years, we have had video conference similar to what we are using today for me to communicate with you. What I note from watching the screen is that there is a great deal of delay between my moving my hand and your seeing me do that. With the robotics system that we are now using, compliments of Dr. Ivar Mendez of Halifax, we are using a system, which we have dubbed “Rosie”, and we have used versions one and two. The delay is not there, and therefore the immediacy of it has helped us a great deal.
I want to step back. A number of years ago, under the generous donation of Dr. Mendez to Labrador-Grenfell Health, my employer, in conjunction with First Nations and Inuit Health, Atlantic Canada, we were recipients of a telerobotics system that was set up in Nain nursing station to assist us with our practice.
As I have previously stated, we are nurses who work on our own. We are six nurses in an isolated location, serving a community of approximately 1,300 Inuit people. The physician comes to visit us every six weeks, maybe. Otherwise he is available to us by telephone and now by telerobotics.
Over the last few years we have learned how to use these systems and how to make them more practice-oriented. We have also learned that our clients are very interested in using these types of systems. We have a champion in our region, Dr. Michael Jong, who you may or may not have heard of, who has been very instrumental in having this move forward with us.
We have presented the benefits of this type of system at various conferences, most recently at the circumpolar health conference in Alaska in August. Previous to that, in the spring of 2011, we presented it at the Canadian Nurses Association conference in Montreal where advanced practice nurses and their administrators were present and heard our presentation. They were also very interested in the uses of this type of mechanical system in locations where the practitioners are limited.
Rosie, which is what we have dubbed the system, is robotic-looking. If you think back to that cartoon The Jetsons, where they had a Rosie housekeeper, well, that's what she looks like. There is a screen with a face. The doctor is able to move the robotics system on his own from Goose Bay. We are 256 air miles north of Goose Bay. When we need him, we call him by telephone. He hooks up to the system and brings the system in to our emergency room. He can move the system on his own.
Then he is able to enter the room where he's going to deliver care—on his own—and assess the patient, speak to the patient directly. The patient can speak directly back to him. As I've said, there is no delay in the communications system when the weather is good and the bandwidth is up.
We have been able to use this in situations where hands-on support has been needed, to talk us through putting in chest tubes, advanced practice procedures. We've also used it in mental health assessments, when clients have been held under the Mental Health Care and Treatment Act. We've used it in education and teaching, for example, advanced cardiac life support systems and megacodes, and with port-a-cath care. We've also used it in nutritional consultations, surgical consults, and cancer client follow-up in between hands-on visits.
The resolution of the screen with this telerobotics system is much better than what you're seeing with this Tandberg-based system we're looking at here. The doctor is able to move forward and view the cardiac monitor and see the heart tracing and how well it's going.
We're sold on this system and how it can be used. We're very interested in the system being used in more northern and isolated locations.
The pros, as we see them, are a decreased cost in travel and time for the client being away from family, a decreased cost in travel for the health care system. We're also interested in the idea that it provides consistent interaction with the same physician when it's possible, rather than the patient interacting with different physicians, be it face to face or whatever.
We're also very pleased with how this can help with recruitment and retention of nursing staff. If you're there alone as a practitioner, or with several other practitioners who are all nurses, and you have the support of a system whereby the doctor can see exactly what you're doing or not doing, you can be assisted in appropriate care of the client.
As well, the system is not weather dependent, which planes are. We move our patients by medevac. All those transportation systems are weather-dependent. That system would certainly help us at the community level.
Finally, our clients who have used this type of system for a number of years are very much at ease with the system and are willing to work with it.
I would certainly be very happy to clarify anything I haven't been clear on or to answer any questions.