Kathy Reilly wakes up in the morning in her home in Co Wicklow and turns on an iPad before checking her vital signs. The results are sent to the medical team monitoring her from St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin.
She is, she said, getting all the tests she would be receiving if she was still in hospital, but she is able to do it all from the comfort of her own home through what is known as a “virtual ward”.
“It’s been absolutely fantastic. The people who are caring for me are second to none; nothing is too much trouble. I have them on my phone any time at all if I’m feeling uncertain or unsure. I have all my kit with me,” the 67-year-old said.
“Initially I thought, ‘Would I be able to do this?’ But it was so carefully explained to me that I got confident quite quickly. Any discrepancies in any of the readings, they’re on to you straight away. And if necessary they’ll ask you to repeat something or to have a rest and then repeat it.”
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A virtual ward enables patients to receive hospital-level care at home, using technology for remote monitoring and virtual check-ins with a hospital care team. For Ms Reilly, it meant she was able to spend Christmas at home with her family and two dogs.
She was brought to St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin earlier this month due to chest pain that was “out of the blue”. Cardiology staff undertook tests to determine the cause, but they “haven’t as yet come to any conclusions”, she says.
She was in hospital for around a week – but rather than keep her there to monitor, they gave her a “lovely option” to return home where she checks her blood pressure, pulse, oxygen saturation and temperature.
“It’s been so good for me personally rather than sitting in there in the hospital and wondering. And at a time when there are so many illnesses, viruses and infections going around hospital wards, and how busy it is in the emergency department,” she says.
“I live alone – I have adult children who have their own lives and their own families – and they were hugely concerned. The fact that I’m at home, it just takes all of that away. The phone is beside you to reassure you, and it’s wonderful.”
Being at home for Christmas “unquestionably” brings her joy, she said, particularly when it comes to being able to see her grandchildren.
“I was missing them terribly when I was in there. They come over to me and tell me about their school plays. Given the level of infection in hospital, nobody is going to be bringing little children in, so it’s just lovely. We can stay together and they can play, and we can do all the things we normally do,” she said.
“I came home [from hospital] and the Christmas tree was up, it was lit and it was so lovely. I didn’t have any of that sense of needing to do things that you would around Christmas.”
Prof Donal O’Shea, clinical director of medicine and emergency medicine at St Vincent’s Hospital, said the technology allows “care in the best environment possible, which for most people when they’re well enough, is the home”.
“Patients when they come to the emergency department will often spend up to 24 hours, certainly 12 hours, before they get to a ward. And then when they get to a ward, our average length of stay for patients is eight to nine days,” he said.
“What the virtual ward can facilitate is that some patients can be onboarded from the emergency department – so they don’t actually need to go on the ward at all. Or for others, it can reduce their length of stay from that average to three or four days.”
If the patient deteriorates, they are brought back in, Prof O’Shea said, but the system allows them to bypass the emergency department.
The hospital began offering the service in June 2024 and has cared for more than 1,000 patients since then. At any one time, there are up to 37 patients on the virtual ward.
“People don’t like hospitals, they don’t like being in hospitals. From an infection point of view, you’re safer at home. So as clinicians, you see a happy patient who is getting appropriate investigations and has a safe pathway back into the hospital,” Prof O’Shea said.
Ms Reilly said she believes her recovery is being aided by being at home, citing the busyness of a hospital setting as disruptive to her sleep. Most importantly to her, however, it allows her to be with her two dogs, who she describes as her “companions”.
“It is a burden if someone has children and they’re getting on with their life and I land my dogs on them as an extra in their life to mind and feed and walk them,” she said.
“To be home and be able to be with them, there’s great comfort in that for me to have the familiar around me. I think if anything is going to help me to heal, it will be having that familiarity.”
