The short answer
Virtual nursing is real but early. Two-thirds of nurse leaders in the FutureCare 2025 survey said they plan to add it, and almost none said when. The term covers three different jobs, so ask whether a hospital runs a virtual nursing unit today or is only planning one.
What is Virtual Nursing?
Start here, because the term gets used for three different jobs and only one of them is what these hospitals are describing.
The American Nurses Association defines a virtual nurse as a licensed nurse working from a location different from where the in-person care happens, whether that's another room, another floor, another building, or another town. In practice, that usually means an experienced nurse at a workstation with the chart open, connected to a camera and screen in the patient's room, handling admissions, discharge teaching, patient education, safety monitoring, and backup for the nurse at the bedside.
Four things it is NOT:
- NOT a specialty. ANA calls virtual nursing a modality, a way of delivering care, rather than a field you transfer into the way you transfer into the ICU. You bring your clinical background with you.
- NOT a replacement for bedside staff. ANA is direct about this. Virtual nurses should "support, but not supplant, nursing staff in nursing ratios, matrices, or other measures of staffing levels." If a program gets sold to you as a way to run a floor with fewer nurses, you need to know that.
- NOT working from home. Most acute-care programs run from a command center inside the hospital, off the unit but in the building. Some roles are fully remote. Many are not, so ask.
- NOT entry level. These programs want nurses who already have the judgment to catch something on a screen, and often want a nurse with a master's degree. Remote does not mean easier to get.
Virtual nursing also isn't the same thing as telehealth. Telehealth is the whole category, including outpatient video visits and remote monitoring. Virtual nursing is one piece inside it, and mostly an inpatient piece. The survey below mixes both, which is part of why its numbers are hard to read.
What the Survey Found
Two-thirds of nurse leaders said they were planning virtual nursing care. That's the headline everybody repeated.
Read the next line, though. The survey asked what leaders intend to do. It didn't count a single program that exists. "Planning to launch" and "running" are different things, and the gap between them is where nurses get hired or don't.
Leaders named five jobs they expect to move to a virtual role: admission support, post-visit follow-up, chronic disease management, behavioral health screening, and backup for bedside nurses.
They named three things they said they need to make it work: informatics, care coordination, and bedside nurses trained on the telehealth platform.
That third one is the one worth noticing. It's not a separate career. It's the unit where you already work, plus training your employer will have to provide anyway.
Pilot or Program
There's a real difference between "we're planning telehealth" and "we run a virtual nursing unit," and the posting won't always tell you which one it is.
A pilot can end. A program that's been running has a schedule, a backup plan for when the platform fails, and nurses working in it full time. Ask which one you're joining.
How far along is this program?
Pilot, first year, or established. Ask how many nurses work in it today.
What does this role actually cover?
Admissions, follow-up, chronic care, behavioral health screening, or bedside backup. Those are five different jobs sharing one title.
How many bedside years do you want?
Remote doesn't mean entry level. Plenty of virtual roles want more experience, not less.
Am I on the unit, off it, or at home?
Command center, another building, or fully remote. That answer changes your commute and your schedule.
What platform, and what training?
Then ask what happens when it goes down mid-shift, and who you call.
Where does this role go if the pilot ends?
A good answer exists. Get it in writing.
See what's open in telehealth and remote nursing.
Notes
- Leader intent, the support roles named, and the value-based care finding: FutureCare Nursing 2025 survey (Wolters Kluwer Lippincott Solutions), 157 nurse leaders, as reported by Telehealth.org, 24 April 2025; checked 20 July 2026.
- "Plan to launch" is stated intent; the survey doesn't count live programs.
Two-thirds of nurse leaders are planning virtual nursing.
The FutureCare Nursing 2025 survey reads as intent, not live programs — and it names the doors in.
The leadership signal
“Plan to launch” is intent, not a count of live programs. Judge each posting on the program behind it, not the trend.
Two examples of virtual nursing work
Admission support
Post-visit follow-up
Questions nurses ask
What is virtual nursing?
The term covers three different jobs. The one hospitals in this survey mean is a nurse who supports the bedside team from a remote station. Ask which one a posting means before you apply.
How can I tell if a hospital really has virtual nursing jobs?
Ask whether it runs a virtual nursing unit now or is still planning telehealth. A posting won't always say, and a plan is not a program.
Sources
