Chief nurse calls for the profession to share same electronic language
NHS Digital’s chief nurse Anne Cooper has called for the profession to get behind the introduction of information standards in nursing.
Cooper told Digital Health News that she has issued a ‘rallying cry’ for nurses to share the same electronic language.
She added: “Technology is becoming more and more important but the nursing profession does not have a shared electronic language.
“This is quite important.”
“If we are going to be able to move information around the system then you have to have a shared language.”
“This is the time to do it, this is our time.”
Cooper also added that having a shared understanding of nursing terminology would increase safety and efficiency.
On her blog, Cooper stresses standards are needed for “how we record a patient’s weight across systems, as it could be used to calculate a dose of a medication.”
“We need to ensure we consistently record nursing observations such as pressure ulcers, so we can measure improvement and compare across systems/organisations.”
She explained it sets a universal language across the organisation. “We need to ensure we express care requirements in a standard way so that when we communicate across organisational boundaries we don’t lose meaning.”
Cooper said the need for national nursing information standards across the professional practice will “enable us to measure nursing outcomes, compare performance, share information and, for the future, provide data that will support accurate AI.”
While bodies such the Professional Record Standards Body (PSRB) could help set up such standards, Cooper says nurses themselves also have to get on board with the concept.
In August, NHS Digital endorsed a national campaign to encourage digital training for nurses.
The Royal College of Nursing’s (RCN) “Every nurse an e-nurse” wants every UK nurse to be an e-nurse by 2020.
6 Comments
Totally agree Anne. And the same principles on a shared electronic language should be in place for other professions too. Medics, AHPs, healthcare scientists etc. would also benefit from standardisation. There is also a challenge there that we need to educate the workforce to ensure they understand the need and benefit of doing so. Neither challenges are impossible and the quicker we get moving on them, and the more people we have taking on the challenges together, the quicker we will get there. You’ve got me signed up already!
Nicely put Mr Ewan Davis “The key to engaging frontline staff is giving them IT that makes their lives better – This means removing or easing mundane and onerous task, freeing time to do things that they find more rewarding.”
This is exactly what our web based app does – removes the manual overheads and admin, the things that computers are really good at. We’ve had a particular focus on DToC, A&E Breaches, visibility of available beds and managing multiple hospitals during Major Incidents, all in real-time.
The great thing about this standards approach, if done well, would mean a much easier transition for care professionals moving between hospitals – because the terminology and approach would all have a familiar look and feel.
The key to engaging frontline staff is giving them IT that makes their lives better – This means removing or easing mundane and onerous task, freeing time to do things that they find more rewarding, enabling them to do a better job and have more fun.
Building such systems requires that the design process (including the definition of the standards that such systems need) is clinically led with frontline staff engaged in design with the engineers, informaticians, designers and patients.
In the last few weeks I have observed how current IT fails to support and worse gets in the way of delivering care good quality compassionate nursing care both with my 93 year Mother (who fell and broke her hip) and my 6 week old granddaughter (who developed bacterial meningitis when visiting her). I glad to say both are now fine, but it does bring it home just how much this stuff matters.
Spot on Anne and you are right, the hard bit is not defining the standards, its successfully engaging the nurses and all the other front-line professionals involved in delivering care at the front line. so that they understand why this is so important and are actively engaged in making it happen. Hearing the message so clearly from leaders is key.
openEHR can provide a mechanism to do this. We already have a number of nursing archetypes and welcome more nursing involvement.
There is a version of the openEHR Clinical Knowledge Manager run by Apperta and supported by the 4 UK Home Countries http://ckm.apperta.org/ckm/ that provides the tooling needed to discuss, create and curate clinical content represented in an open format linking to SNOMED-CT and HL7-FHIR
Annie you know where to find me. Happy to help
Scrolled down expecting Ewan, I’ve not been disappointed.
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