Heartbeat: Acute paediatric physiotherapy team embrace the advantages of Unity

February 27, 2020

Ahead of the introduction of Unity, most teams understandably had a few concerns about the way their established practices and routines would change. The acute paediatric physiotherapy team were no different but soon got on board and discovered some major benefits.

“We’ve found Unity helpful. We’re a team that has both inpatients and outpatients, so there’s been a lot to overcome with using it in the two services. Inpatient-wise, we’ve found viewing and progressing the patient easier in terms of being able to access their records remotely rather than having to physically go to the ward and check their notes. That’s been quicker, which has benefitted us,” says Sophie Baggott, the clinical lead for acute paediatric physiotherapy.

“A large proportion of our service is outpatient-based so we’ve used Unity more in that capacity. We’ve been able to develop the auto-text function quite quickly. Whereas we used to have a paper assessment form, with everything written down in boxes, we’ve been able to create auto-text so we can populate the form quickly.

“We’ve been able to make it bespoke. We would have had a whole assessment form before but now we can just use the relevant parts so it’s more concise. It’s tailored to the patient, which is better, and with the auto-text, you can just do it in a couple of clicks. You’re not typing everything out each time.”

As well as helping to save time and speed things up, Unity has improved communication between clinical and administrative colleagues, as Paediatric Physiotherapist, Lucy Styles explains.

“We’ve found the scheduling page useful. If one of the patients rings our admin staff to say they’re running 10 minutes late, the notes section is really helpful. That’s been helpful to pass messages between us and admin.”

Lucy and the rest of the team have even found that Unity allows them to plan ahead. The better prepared they are, the smoother their working day runs.

“In the morning it’s quite nice to come in and see who’s in the clinic. You can put all the auto-text in and put what they’re coming to see you for. Then, when you’re seeing the patient all the information is already there and you’ve just got to type what the patient tells you and what you find. You can prepare for your whole day in advance, which is good.”

Long term, as more information is entered into Unity, other benefits will become apparent. “As time goes on it will be a lot easier to look at past appointments, whereas before on CDA you’d have to click on one scanned image and then scroll down and find your next one. You’d end up with multiple tabs open whereas once Unity’s more populated it will be easy to just click and see everything right there. You can then have your notes next to it at the same time.”