Proposed Topic (Most preferred): :
HA Young Investigators Session (Projects to be presented by HA staff who had joined HA for 10 years or less)
Proposed Topic (Second preferred): :
Clinical Safety and Quality Service I (Projects aiming to improve efficiency and effectiveness of care delivery to meet international standards)
Authors (including presenting author) :
Ching WC(1), Chan CW(1), Shi NM(1), Kwong WY(1), Tsang HW(1), Chan SF(1), So HW(1), Leung CCA(1), Li KY(1)
Affiliation :
(1)Department of Rehabilitation and Extended Care, TWGHs Wong Tai Sin Hospital
Introduction :
In the era of rapid technological advances, nursing care delivery transformed significantly based on the big data to provide more efficient patient care with enhanced safety in a sustainable manner. Smart technologies not only serve as a means to collect massive data for analysis, but also a tool to refine nursing practice (Zhu et al., 2019). An improvement of 6.9% in nursing efficiency was reported by Duan and Lin (2022). Communicating health strategies were adopted to implement smart technologies including Clinical Dashboard (CDB), e-Vital and e-Bed Panel in a convalescent ward in TWGHs Wong Tai Sin Hospital to streamline the workflow and replace traditional handwritten practice. It is important to understand user satisfaction and feedback in order to tailor-make for different ward situations and promote clinical advancement.
Objectives :
1) To review and replace current practice with smart technologies to improve workflow efficiency. 2) To improve effectiveness of clinical communication and nursing care. 3) To enhance clinical safety.
Methodology :
Communicating health strategies were applied to the introduction of smart technologies: 1) arouse nurses’ interest through training; 2) strengthen their skills and knowledge by return demonstration; 3) tailor training to individual needs; and 4) sustain their skills and knowledge with the support of continuous quality improvement team members. Regular review and modification to fit into ward practice were performed. A nurse satisfaction survey was conducted one year after implementation of the smart technologies. Likert scale questions were constructed focusing on: 1) workflow efficiency; 2) effective clinical communication; 3) clinical safety; and 4) user-friendliness. An open-ended question was included to seek individual feedback from nurses.
Result & Outcome :
Twenty-two nurses responded to the survey. All respondents agreed that the three smart technologies were able to replace traditional practice with enhanced workflow efficiency, clinical communication and clinical safety. Inconvenient access and input of e-Vital and e-Bed Panel were reported in 32% and 23% of the nurses respectively. Mostly reported limitation was related to delay in system response and suboptimal Wi-Fi connectivity. Further refinement on system and user customization is needed to enhance user satisfaction and further increase workflow efficiency. Close collaboration between end users and IT department is crucial to drive future healthcare delivery transformation in sustaining effective nursing practice.
