Virtual supports for health care providers in rural, remote, and Indigenous communities

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 62, No. 8, October 2020, Page 297 News

Real-Time Virtual Support (RTVS) pathways is a new virtual support initiative enabling rural health care providers to deliver timely patient-centred care closer to home. Physicians, nurse practitioners, and nurses in rural, remote, and Indigenous communities will have access to 24-hour, just-in-time advice through Zoom and can be connected to one of five teams providing culturally safe and compassionate support:

  • RUDi—Emergency
  • ROSe—Critical care
  • CHARLiE—Pediatrics
  • MaBAL—Maternity and newborn
  • UBC Dermatology rural and remote service

These teams have an understanding of the rural and cultural contexts and are available to support rural health care providers for any issue, including:

  • Providing a patient consult, second opinion, or ongoing patient support.
  • Reviewing a patient case.
  • Running through patient simulation scenarios.
  • Navigating the health care system.
  • Providing collaborative support in critical times.

To learn more about the pathways and how to access them, download the RTVS Toolkit for Healthcare Providers at http://bit.ly/RTVSToolkit. The toolkit includes access information, Zoom instructions, FAQs, bios and photos of RTVS teams, and posters.

Real-Time Virtual Support is an initiative of the Virtual Health and Wellness Collaborative for Rural and First Nations BC. For more information visit https://rccbc.ca/rtvs.

. Virtual supports for health care providers in rural, remote, and Indigenous communities. BCMJ, Vol. 62, No. 8, October, 2020, Page(s) 297 - News.



Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply