Dudley nurses use workflow software to cut paperwork
- 28 March 2007
Nurses at the Dudley Hospitals in the West Midlands are using Siemens’ embedded workflow engine, Soarian, to sort their nursing documentation and their work lists electronically.
Speaking at the Healthcare Computing conference, Sarah Gibson-Jones, the EPR clinical project lead at the Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Trust, said that the trust felt a need to make the patient’s journey processes more generic and less repetitive.
“We identified a series of problems with the way our nurses were working. There was a lot of duplication, records were having to be accessed a lot and re-checked resulting in actioning delays, even more duplication, poor communications and too much paper-shuffling.”
Soarian is designed with a workflow orientation that helps you provide optimum care while supporting co-operation across the hospital. It helps drive and direct workflow processes to reduce handoffs and promote standardisation for more measurable and predictable outcomes, enabling the trust to focus on care delivery, rather than on administrative tasks.
Gibson-Jones said: “Soarian reduces the chance of notes having duplication and improves communications and efficiency. For each staff member, a work list is filtered, so for doctors, the filter gives them access to their patients only. Junior doctors can log on to a consultant’s coverage, so no manual work is necessary any more. Alerts prompt the staff member to tasks that need accomplished and so workflow becomes easier.
“Staff therefore become forced to do the next task, there is no wasted time searching for information – each record is filtered for the patient with access to the necessary documentation and every piece of information necessary presented on the same page.”
Using the system, all staff members treating an individual patient are brought together and all notes can be input to the system for all the authorised clinical staff to see. A paper based document management project at the trust was transferred to Soarian.
Gibson-Jones said: “We have had the nurses design their own documentation so that it can now be input electronically from the point of admission to the point of discharge. The documents include drop down boxes for questions with multiple answers and looks at admission, discharge checklist, falls risks, IV sites, mobility and handling and urinalysis. The purpose of the project is to remind the nurses that if you don’t write everything down then you can’t have done it in the first place.”
Explaining the benefits Soarian brings to the trust, she added: “With Soarian, we get 100% blanket referral notifications, the document process is simple; no searching is involved. Everything is in one place offering greater access and optimised workflow minimising discharge delays.”
The trust is looking to expand its use of Soarian in the future to further increase the use of workflow planning.
“The future plan is to use Soarian for planned discharge dates to try and action as well as the discharge checklist process. We also want 48 hours warnings to start such a process and a 24 hour escalation if the alert was not acknowledged.
“We are also doing a process review to identify the weak points and are looking at making communications between staff easier. We want to increase the use of forward planning and with the use of laptops and PCs on trolleys; we are looking to pilot vital signs monitoring in our primary care units.”
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Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Trust
