Nursing Assessments Matter
Redesigning the nurse assessment form to release time to care
Overview
Project duration: 1 week Design Sprit (2023) – ongoing
Partners: Mater Hospital, NCAD, HSE Spark Innovation Programme
Funding: HSE Spark Innovation
"When we quantify the benefit, it’s about 375,000 pages that won’t have to be filled in each year by the nursing community at the Mater… anything we can do to reduce the paper workload, so that nurses can spend more time with the patient, is always welcomed."Alan Sharp, CEO Mater Hospital
Impact
The Nursing Assessment form is a document that informs care for the 25,000 plus patients that are admitted to the Mater each year. The team reduced this form from 19 pages down to 5, and drastically improved the layout, hierarchy, and flow of the document. The new form will save time, as well as improve the workflow for nurses, in turn improving patient care. Additionally, this shorter form will be cheaper to produce since it uses less paper, and will be easier to digitise in the future.
"The form is used to tell the story of the patient on admission to nurses on the ward, so the risk of miscommunication could have a direct impact on the patient."Julie Grennell Clinical Nurse Manager
Challenge
The existing form is 19 pages long and is cumbersome to complete as well as to read. The layout lacks an intuitive flow making it difficult for nurses to find the information they need. This leads to the form not being filled out correctly. It also makes it difficult for the nurse to get a holistic sense of the patient.
Process
The students started off with some primary research to better understand the existing process and the various users. They interviewed key hospital staff and facilitated a survey and card sorting exercises with student nurses. They observed a hospital ward and invited the nurses to participate in form analysis.
The students also conducted secondary research by looking into nursing forms that exist in other hospitals, as well as best practices for designing information forms.
Output
The final design of the form is a three page fold out document that has all of the information displayed in one place. In research, the students learned that the cover page is most important and oftentimes is the only page nurses read, so they put the most important information on the front. In addition they included a primary and secondary survey for patients that help nurses to prioritise which questions need to be asked within the first 24 hours.
- In terms of visual changes, the student used columns and colour coding to condense the form and make it easier to navigate.
- Each section has a qualifying question which will help the nurse to determine whether that section needs to be filled out or can be skipped.
- And finally, each section has a signature and date required which will help nurses keep track of who filled out the form, should they need to follow up.
A team across the Mater and NCAD are now carrying the project forward with a view to full implementation within the hospital by July 2023.
