Barnsley Hospital NHS FT starts using electronic care planning

Staff at Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust have started using electronic care planning to create plans which are tailored to the individual needs of patients.

The functionality is integrated with System C’s EPR and was developed in partnership between the trust and System C.  It ensures every patient is assessed and given a care plan on admission and the plan then acts as a ‘living document’, evolving in time to ensure care is optimised and desired outcomes are reached.

A patient’s care plan is developed using a core template, focusing on the essentials of care including nutrition and hydration, elimination, mobility, sleeping, tissue viability, falls prevention, psychological needs, personal cares, recording of clinical interventions, communication and  venous thromboembolism.

Three assessments are completed within the core to tailor it to the patients’ status and additional needs are added if required.

The plan helps ensure a patient gets the same standard, quality and accuracy of care regardless of which members of staff are on duty.

Claire Grant, chief nursing information officer at Barnsley Hospital, said: “The fact that we have developed ‘one patient – one care plan’ and that the plan is truly tailored to the needs of the patient, is a great achievement for the trust. “

“Nursing care plans add quality to the care of each patient, be personalised to that patient’s needs and provide maximum protection for nurses all while achieving gold standard in documentation. These were our objectives from the outset, and we have met them.”

“When patients stay with us their families and carers can be involved in the development of their nursing care plan at the bedside and the nurse can therefore have more time with their patients for the ‘hands on’ care.”

Barnsley went live with System C’s care planning module as part of its wider EPR deployment, which involved migrating from its legacy Lorenzo system to System C’s CareFlow EPR (formerly known as Medway).

Ian Denley, joint chief executive at System C, added: “It has been great working in partnership with Barnsley and its nursing leaders on this care planning functionality, and the fact that Barnsley’s work has been recognised by the Nursing Times Awards is very well deserved.

“We are looking forward to making this functionality available to all our users.”