Morecambe Bay Trust supports '˜every nurse an e-nurse' campaign

The Trust will showcase some of the fantastic work which is happening as part of the Electronic

Patient Record (EPR) on UHMBT Facebook and Twitter.

E-nursing week, which began on Monday 21 August and runs until Sunday, has focused on various aspects of e-nursing, including technology at patient’s bedsides, data-sharing, digital security and the role of apps and wearables. The RCN wants every UK nurse to be an e-nurse by 2020.

Over the past 12 months the Trust has developed and rolled out the Digital Nursing Record across the three main hospital sites as part of the EPR.

As a result, almost 90,000 electronic notes were recorded by nurses in June.

In addition, at both Furness General Hospital (FGH) and Royal Lancaster Infirmary (RLI) a pilot was recently started to supplement the digital nursing record by allowing the nurses to record the comfort round at the bedside via the use of an iPod device.

The comfort round was piloted for a number of months on Ward 6 at FGH to ensure any early usability teething problems were ironed out.

Sue Smith, Executive Chief Nurse, said: “This is an inspirational initiative which really highlights all of the benefits of using technology and the priority on ensuring nurses across the NHS have the skills they need to be able to use the technology effectively. We have endorsed this way of working at UHMBT including our nurses using iPod devices which has seen some great results.”

The shift from nursing staff using the traditional paper based record to a digital nursing record is significant and a challenge that the EPR Clinical Content team and clinical staff at UHMBT are meeting together. Emerging technologies such as iPods will, over time, significantly change the practice of nursing not just at UHMBT but indeed across the world. The right piece of equipment for the right task is

important to provide point of care digital documentation.

The challenge the team faces on a daily basis is to integrate the technologies and electronic forms into the nurses daily work and current and best nursing practice without disrupting the overall status quo within the hospital. A pilot approach allows the nursing staff to get used to using the new device whilst at the same time enabling the IT Team to learn about the practical use of the device on the wards and make improvements before a wider roll out across the Trust.

In the future, the iPods will be used for recording more nursing assessments and nursing observations quickly and easily at the bedside without the need to write Them down or having to log into a PC.

To find out more about how nurses are using technology at UHMBT watch our

series of short films at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKmp3FnggeU&t=65s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X9_zcbx_uA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTKifYlu-zk&t=30s

You can find out more about the campaign at https://www.digitalhealth.net/2017/08/nhs-digital-endorses-every-nurse-an-e-nurse-

campaign/.