UVM Medical Center limits nursing assistants' sitter role

Remote monitors, dedicated staff to cover observation duties

UVM Medical Center quietly rolled out a new policy in June dictating how its staff watch over patients who are at risk of hurting themselves while in the hospital, according to a VTDigger report published by The Associated Press. The policy limits licensed nursing assistants — LNAs — from serving as sitters for patients who need continuous supervision.

Sitters, whom the hospital calls clinical patient safety attendants, or CPSAs, stay with patients who need supervision. Patients who might fall, wander or pull out IVs are often assigned sitters, as are patients who are highly suicidal or epileptic. Licensed nursing assistants have often filled that role, the report said.

Under the new policy, licensed nursing assistants are limited from filling the sitter role. The change is intended to keep LNAs staffed on more “direct” patient care needs, Annie Mackin, a spokesperson for UVM Medical Center, told VTDigger.

Instead of assigning LNAs to stay with individual patients, the hospital is prioritizing remote patient monitoring — essentially a video monitor on wheels connected to a remote observer who watches many patients at once — or dispatching designated observation staff, not LNAs, when supervision is necessary, Mackin said.

The policy reshapes how the hospital assigns a core safety function: continuous observation of patients who might fall, wander, pull out IVs or harm themselves while in the hospital. The change quietly took effect in June, according to the report.