You Can't Be With Your Patients All the Time-Patient and Staff Views of a Wearable Vital Signs Monitoring System

To explore staff and patient perception of the newly co-developed wearable monitoring system (WMS), including acceptability of use in clinical practice.

Pragmatic qualitative descriptive study.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 patient participants and eight staff members between June 2023 and August 2024, and were analysed thematically.

Three themes were identified, building on previous qualitative work around the use of WMS on hospital wards. The first theme-centralised continuous monitoring enhances care-explores how WMS provides staff with a means to provide safe, efficient care with the ability to see the vital signs away from the patient. Patients reported feeling safer, knowing they were being monitored when staff were not at the bedside. The second theme-human connection at the bedside-considers how both patients and staff emphasised that the system should not replace nurse/patient interactions and face-to-face care, even though it provided patients with a stronger sense of independence. The final theme-system usability and integration into care-focuses on use of the system in clinical practice and implications for the future.

Wearable monitoring systems have the potential to support nurses to provide safer, more efficient care, whilst providing reassurance to patients. However, centralised monitoring should not replace face-to-face clinical contact, and careful consideration should be given to who would benefit most from the technology.

This study extends existing knowledge of the impact of WMS from being a tool to enhance patient safety to an intervention to improve nurse efficiency and patient experience, within the context of a high-demand surgical ward.

Patients and members of the public were involved in study design and data collection. Their contributions included participating in advisory groups, ensuring the research addressed patient-relevant priorities.