Digital solutions to create safer working
My Topol fellowship problem / project:
The Emergency Department’s (ED) capacity has been constantly overstretched and the poor staff-to- patient ratio (while not the only reason) has led to treatment delays and longer ED stay. Nursing and care staff in particular find it extremely difficult to keep track and carry out patient-related interventions every time the department is overwhelmed. The risk of committing medical and nursing negligence is significant as it only takes a simple oversight of an important patient intervention or a miscalculation of a priority to cause a patient harm. This compromises the quality of care and affects not just the patient experience but our staff morale and their job satisfaction as well.
A huge opportunity exists on how we can aid our staff take better control of tasks and create a system of working that is smarter. I believe that to be able to do this, we need to provide them with a tool that is technology driven and will organise and automate how they account for, track and manage all the tasks related to the patient. This tool will also provide us with concrete data to understand workload better and potentially draw a more reliable capacity plan.
About me
I have always been passionate about technology and data and I knew that my current role as Digital Nurse Specialist for the Trust is the perfect opportunity to make an impact to the way we work and ultimately improve patient outcome.
My love affair with digital technology started 6 years ago when I first took on a leadership role to manage a team of analysts for a global financial technology company. This experience exposed me to systems and data management and allowed me to learn from like-minded professionals. I was exposed and entrusted to deliver improvement projects involving system redesign, automation, and machine learning.
Despite my limited background with IT, I progressed with the role until I left the organization in 2019 to pursue my nursing career in the UK.
Currently, I am involved with system deployment initiatives, system analysis and digital training. Also, I do clinical shifts on a regular basis because this gives me the perfect opportunity to appreciate the experience of our staff using our clinical systems while at the same time looking for improvement opportunities.