Nurse on Line/Nurse Care Line

(I thought I would share this as most of you don't really know what all my job entails, here is a very good description of our 24/7 operation we offer to our Essentia Health Patients~Susan)

The power of nursing by phone
Published 13 December, 2012

Registered nurse walks Dr. Nikcevich through the Nurse Care Line
Stacey Karkkainen, RN, shows East Region President Dr. Daniel Nikcevich how she helps patients calling in to Essentia Health's Nurse Care Line.
DULUTH -- When we talk about care with a personal touch, it’s easy to focus on clinic- and hospital-based care. But an amazing amount of Essentia Health’s patient care is being delivered by phone in former warehouse space in West Duluth.

East Region President Dr. Daniel Nikcevich got an up-close look at the services provided through the Essentia Nurse Care Line as part of the Walk In My Shoes job-shadowing program. He spent a recent afternoon observing the work of Stacey Karkkainen, RN.

Formerly known as Nurse On Line, the Nurse Care Line’s best known work is with patients who call in for help with medical issues. “Ideally, we are supposed to help 32 patients in an eight-hour shift,” Karkkainen explains, “Of course, this varies because no call is ever the same.”

On this afternoon, Karkkainen returned a call from a mother seeking help with her daughter’s suspected sinus infection. After reviewing the girl’s medical history and going through a list of questions Karkkainen determined the cause was most likely viral, and antibiotics wouldn’t help.

Nurse Care Line RNs at-a-glance ~~~
The 60 registered nurses working within Essentia Telecare Services wear many hats. Here’s a look at their responsibilities:

Triage-- 24-hour triage services for patients in Essentia Health’s East and Central Regions (and soon to our patients in the West region as well).

STAT DOC – Facilitates transfers and admissions of patients from nursing homes and smaller hospitals. Also used to admit emergency trauma cases.

Rx Refill – Telecare nurses handle the majority of prescription refill requests for East Region patients and area pharmacies.

STEMI – Telecare nurses play a key role in the success of Essentia’s STEMI program, which works to get heart attack patients the care they need as quickly as possible.

Transitional Care Calls – RNs make follow-up calls to recently discharged hospital patients. The goal – to catch any potential problems early and thus avoid hospital readmissions.

Instead, she suggested flushing the girl’s nasal passages with warm water and salt. She also assured the concerned mother that her daughter was well enough to attend school. The reassured mother thanked her and Karkkainen moved on to her next call.
Dr. Nikcevich had a personal interest in seeing how Karkkainen and her colleagues handled another aspect of their jobs – a service, known as STAT DOC – that regional physicians use when they need to transfer patients to Duluth for hospital care. As a practicing oncologist, Dr. Nikcevich was a frequent user of the service.

“These nurses always made my job easier,” says Dr. Nikcevich, who was happy to finally meet several familiar voices in person during his visit. “They were professional, efficient and I knew when a patient arrived at the hospital that every detail would be taken care of.”

Karkkainen, for her part, appreciated Dr. Nikcevich’s visit. “I don’t think people realize everything we do out here to help patients,” she said.

While much of Karkkainen’s work currently focuses on the East Region, Essentia’s Duluth-based Telecare Services are being used in a limited scope in the Central Region and piloted in the West.


Susan A. Reed, RN
Nurse Clinician, Nurse on Line
Essentia Health
Duluth Clinic
Nurse on Line Dept | Mail Drop: West Annex
(: 218-786-3110 or 1-800-714-4646
*susan.reed@essentiahealth.org