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Interview In Action: Stopping Nursing Violence Through Ambient Tech with Lisbeth Votruba

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Now onto the interview.

Drex DeFord: (Interview 1) Hey everyone, I'm Drex and, I'm really excited today to have on the program Lisbeth Votruba, who is the Chief Clinical Officer at Asure. hi Lisbeth. I'm glad you're here. Me too. there's a lot of really interesting stuff going on in healthcare. You guys are leading a lot of that at Avature. let's start a little bit though, tell me a little bit about your background and how you made your way into this kind of amazing leadership role at Avature. And one of the things I was really impressed by when I did a little research on you, yesterday is that you're a third generation nurse, so this really is the family business for you. tell me more about your background.

And I finally got there and, I've worked as a nurse in the ICU, for about. Almost 10 years. And then I was a magnet program director and clinical nurse specialist at a Trinity Hospital in Grand Rapids. And that is where I had kind of a career changing serendipity, innovation moment.

Drex DeFord: Wow. Exciting. And I mean, I think the, you know, this is the, it is the beauty of sort of taking advantage of the opportunities that come up and not having a really specific career plan.

'cause you don't know what kind of the world's gonna deal you. So you've really shown a lot of that flexibility in taking advantage of the stuff that's just sort of happened.

lisbeth Votruba: I was gonna be a nurse anesthetist by the time I was 30, so I had a plan. It's just I was open to, changing my path.

Yeah,

Drex DeFord: absolutely. This side open

lisbeth Votruba: to opportunities. Yeah.

Drex DeFord: what Mike Tyson says. Something to the effect of like, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. Yeah. There's a, there's, that's a good

lisbeth Votruba: motto. Thanks Drex.

lisbeth Votruba: Yeah, I think when people think about sort of that smart room of the future or the futuristic care, they think of sleek and high tech, like minority report kind of thing, right? And, that is, what it is. But as a third generation nurse, what excites me though? Is how tech can allow us to return to something more timeless. that attentive, personalized human care where the technology is almost like oxygen, you don't even realize it's there, but it really supports caregivers in getting back to the kind of joyful care that maybe my grandmother and mother did. without having to document and have a screen between themselves and their patients.

Drex DeFord: I mean,

I'm married to a nurse, but I think we need nurses to drive a lot of the innovation that we need to do in healthcare, you've been a huge advocate for that. Tell me about that sort of work that you're also doing.

Drex DeFord: It's interesting, right? I mean, medicine's a team sport. Absolutely. And like you, I have spent 30 plus years of my career, in a hospital as a Chief Information Officer. And I can tell you, like, I think, most doctors would probably admit that the whole machine runs because of the nurses. the things that happen, the way that patients are taken care of most of the time is spent, with nurses. And, , here's a few of the things that I hear a lot. As I sit around with my local nurse mafia, and talk about the clinical environment, in a lot of cases in the old school kind of environment that still exists in a lot of places today. nurses often don't feel supported. Sometimes it can even be a physically threatening, Place to work depending on what could be the mix of patients and families and other things that are going on, it all adds to a new level [00:08:00] of stress that I've not really seen in the past. It seems like the last couple of years it has really sort of rolled into a crescendo.

How are you helping make that world better for nurses? Where, all of these concerns are kind of, boiling right now.

lisbeth Votruba: just yesterday I was meeting with the system chief nursing officer and a system chief security officer, for a large Midwest health system.

We were talking about workplace violence and they shared with us a story of one patient that was stuck in their care for 90 days, who was extremely violent. but there weren't the right community resources for that patient. So then the hospital often is left holding the bag. And, that patient was responsible for 80% of, injuries that occurred in the hospital during 90 days.

Yeah but also nurses need that extra set of eyes and futuristically, what's very exciting too, is a wake word. So if you have a virtual care platform. In the patient room, and I mean a virtual care platform with capital P. it can be ambiently listening for a wake word, like please call a Code Gray, or Bert's team, which is behavioral, emergency response team. and then also, um, AI can be used in two ways with computer vision to detect, potential escalation and behaviors and listening for, words or phrases, that indicate potential violence. So, instead of having badges that like, are like heavy and pull on the [00:11:00] nurses and who's got your badge and, or buttons installed in the walls the virtual care offers I think, some really more elegant solutions to keep staff safe.

Do you hear those kinds of things from nurses who have gone through these sorts of, AvaSure installations or ambient installations or other things? Is, are those the kinds of things that you see in studies and in your field work too?

Drex DeFord: Great conversation. Elizabeth Lizabeth Vitruba, the Chief Clinical Officer at Avasure. I'm really glad that, we had a chance to chat today.

lisbeth Votruba: Me too.

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