Heartbeat: Neonatal unit make Unity work for them

November 27, 2019

All areas of the Trust have their own unique characteristics, and great effort has gone into making sure that Unity has been customised to take account of this. The neonatal unit is more complex than most but they have succeeded in modifying the system so that it works for them.

Ward Manager, Sally Haycox explained: “There are not many units in the country that run a full neonatal system on Unity. They use aspects of it but not the full thing. Unity had to be bespoke for us. We practised on the generic Play System but a bespoke programme had to be built for us so the staff had no experience of the actual programme until we went live.

“It actually went very well. They took everything on board and ran with it. Yes, we had issues just like everyone else, but with the super users, the floorwalkers and all the support we had, the majority of issues were addressed. There are still build issues that we need to take forward into phase two but I don’t think they’re insurmountable.

“Credit needs to go to my nursing team. The sort of people they are and the environment we’re in – we’re an intensive care unit, we’re an ED unit, we’re almost a hospital within a hospital – their mindset is that they’ll tackle anything that comes their way and they’ll do their best. They have in this case.”

Dr S Sivakumar, the speciality lead for neonates, was there to support the implementation first-hand and he was equally impressed. There had been some tension in the days before go-live as they raced to get everything ready in time. This involved finalising standard operating procedures, quick reference guides, workflows and order sets, running training sessions for doctors and nurses, and devoting quality improvement sessions completely to Unity, but it all went to plan.

“Unity has overcome many problems and I’m quite impressed with the build, especially in terms of prescriptions and infusions. We’re grateful to the pharmacists, who worked extremely hard to get these complex medications sorted in the finest detail so we were able to prescribe them. That was one of the major worries we had but it’s working well. There is ongoing work on gentamicin and vancomycin prescriptions to make them completely risk-free,” he said.

“Because of the hard work of various colleagues, from the clinical side as well as the Unity and managerial side, we’ve made it a success. I’m pleased to say that in the first couple of weeks the neonatal unit has been top in areas like results endorsement despite the complexity of the work.

“Clinical documentation is good in Unity but can be slow as some of the information also needs to be replicated in neonatal BadgerNet and maternity BadgerNet because the interface between the three systems is poor. We have requested an upgrade to neonatal BadgerNet to match the maternity version, which will help to speed up the documentation process.”

Neonatal colleagues have taken to Unity well, noting that the standardised process for ordering tests and medication is much quicker than before and easier for trainees to replicate in other areas. A couple of the team shared their thoughts on the new system.

Eleanor Taylor, a sister on the neonatal unit, said: “I was actually quite worried about it at first but I’ve found it to be ok. It’s easier not having to manually write everything. I like the fact that you can do your notes throughout the day and they’re done for handover. There are some issues that are being addressed so we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Vidya Santharam, Neonatal Registrar, said: “I think it’s good in lots of respects. It’s nice to have everything in one place. Once we learn how to navigate it more effectively, I can see how we’ll be able to do things quicker. At the moment it’s a bit slow because we’re all still learning. I can see the positives and I think it will be good in the long run.”