Dr. Nedelková was one of the first doctors in Slovakia to try the virtual nurse Emmy. At a conference of general practitioners in the Tatras, Ondřej Sobotka had a great opportunity to meet her in person and ask her some questions about her experience with this new assistant.

What made you want to give Emmy a try?

We were forced to do it by a situation that was becoming unbearable in the ambulance service, because we had an enormous amount of work to do in terms of sick patients, preventive measures and so on, and then we started to accumulate an enormous amount of requests via telemedicine. That is, patients were phoning on the two phones we had at the time,emailing and writing on WhatsApp, Messenger and we just couldn't keep up with sorting or keeping track of it. We happened to have missed some things, which was very frustrating of course, so we were looking for a way to improve that and in addition to that we found various materials about Emmy and we reached out to you.

Was it difficult to get started with Virtual Sister?

I don't think so. We were a little bit worried about the seniors and the elderly, that they might not be able to handle it, but by giving them that option that they could be represented by children and grandchildren and so on, we were very pleasantly surprised, because if I'm not mistaken, we launched Emmy sometime around half past four in the afternoon. And by the morning we had about 48 requests, so it was clear that Emmy was up and running.

So the phone calls don't bother you anymore?

Absolutely. That's probably what we're most excited about. We actually haven't caught a phone call in our ambulance service once in a month, but that not even once. We have an answering machine there so if there's something very important we respond to those requests through the answering machine,but really the gro of those requests have started to come through Emmy already and it's a huge advantage that there's triage that the nurse can do and I'm actually just joining in.

Didn't the nurse have a problem with what the doctor was making up on her again?

No, she didn't protest because I relieved her of catching those phone calls because that was her job. She was doing sort of the demarcation line, she was doing that triage of the phone calls and those patient requests and anyway she had to come to me with every phone call and ask how we're going to resolve it, what we're going to do, what's going to be the best way to do it and now she knows that she already has a competency that she can resolve on her own without reaching out to me.

How long did it take you to get used to having Emmy in the office?

About a week. It went really well beyond expectation and I am extremely happy, I don't think I would change for sure.

Does that mean that now you only have your phone in the surgery and Emmy next to it, so you're no longer chasing emails, WhatsApp, Messenger...?

Absolutely. Although we still have an email address that belongs to the practice and we still get requests there, but because we have an auto-responder uploaded there that again navigates that patient to log into Emma and reach out to us through there, I think the vast majority respect that because we're maybe a little bit strict, but I think we've just stopped responding to those emails. I mean, even if he writes in there, all he gets is a reply saying to apply for the Emmy. And when he signs up for it, he's dealt with to his satisfaction, and that's the bottom line.

Is there anything you'd like to say to your colleagues who are still struggling with phone calls?

I certainly do. Anyone who has a problem with patient triage, anyone who has a problem of being overwhelmed with a lot of phone calls and a lot of emails from patients, I think this is a way that will definitely make that situation easier for them.

Is there anything you miss at Emmy that would make your job even easier?

I do think that we will pick up the so-called flies even more by using this more and more. We certainly haven't mastered all the functionality completely yet, because it can't be done in those few weeks. We're getting familiar with it, we're getting comfortable with it, we're trying new things, and we're taking notes. We have these workbooks where we write down what we would like to maybe build into Emma, put in, or change. So I think that if the mutual cooperation works, we will improve and innovate the programme together.

Well done. Thank you very much for the nice interview and for your courage to introduce Emmy in the practice.

We thank you for Emmy as such. And we wish you lots of good, good, innovative ideas to help us even more.