A time saving app is drastically revolutionising how nurses and doctors maintain high quality care across wards under Barts Health.
The Perfect Ward app is enabling staff to quickly complete a set of questions monitoring the key indicators of care, and put things right there and then.
The technology captures everything from the basics such as ensuring patients have enough to drink or whether the medicine cabinet is locked correctly, through to more complex indicators like assessing the processes used to spot and treat sepsis infections or pressure ulcers.
Real-time data is then available at the fingertips of hospital staff, saving hours that would be spent writing up and analysing the findings from paper-based audits.
Barts Health chief nurse Caroline Alexander said: “This is going to revolutionise how we improve services. It means we can check the things that matter to our patients quickly and spot recurring trends at our fingertips. It also makes it easier for our busy teams on wards to go through their regular checks.”
Through using the app staff on wards can fix issues immediately, while the results are all uploaded centrally meaning themes can be analysed across the trust, helping teams to secure long-term, sustainable improvement.
Polly Payne, senior sister in the paediatric acute assessment unit at The Royal London Hospital, said: “The Perfect Ward app has made a huge difference, with us now having greater patient and family interaction and seeing things with a fresh pair of eyes which is helping us to improve our care.
“It is also enabling our patients and families to use their experience to improve care for others. For example we now know that parents, as well as children, like to be called by their name. So we’re no longer calling everyone ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’ which actually makes direct communication far easier.”
