Heartbeat: Dress rehearsal of Unity takes place in focused clinical areas

September 26, 2018

‘A useful exercise but more training is required’ was a running theme from the feedback of over 90 colleagues who took part in the second dress rehearsal of Unity.

The dress rehearsal was in focused areas at Sandwell and City hospitals including critical care, ED, BMEC, cardiology and BTC. In their feedback colleagues were enthusiastic about Unity but also highlighted issues that require resolving before we are ready for go-live.

Shafiq Ullah is responsible for ensuring a smooth go-live of Unity, he explained more to Heartbeat.

“The dress rehearsal was very useful for everyone who took part. Issues were raised and we have logged these and will be working through them over the coming weeks to ensure a resolution. We will also work closely with colleagues to inform them of progress regarding any queries raised.”

The purpose of the dress rehearsal was to identify issues and drive out risk before go-live of the new system. For the selected operational teams, the dress rehearsal was an opportunity to verify that Unity works in a business as usual context.

So we asked Shafiq how he felt we measured against the aims. He said: “The user engagement was very positive; colleagues felt that this was a worthwhile exercise and especially now they were able to use Unity with some of the devices such as printing and scanning.

“We also had the opportunity to test our process for managing IT issues, both locally with colleagues and through the service desk – logging IT issues through the service desk enables us to identify any common problems across the organisation. This will be a crucial process at go-live as we will seek to resolve issues as quickly as possible.”

Shafiq continued: “Additionally, I am aware that many areas were looking forward to participating in the dress rehearsal, and to ensure we don’t lose the opportunity to engage we have planned to visit a number of specific areas to carry out further Unity activities similar to the dress rehearsal using the live system.”

Heartbeat spoke to colleagues who took part in the rehearsal and a continuing theme was the requirement for more training and ensuring that colleagues are provided with opportunities to keep their knowledge fresh.

“We are certainly aware that this was a key issue for many colleagues,” said Shafiq. “The availability of the Unity play system will certainly help colleagues to maintain familiarity with Unity. There are also plans in place to develop some online learning. Colleagues can also keep engaged with Unity by making use of the Unity corners which can be found in many departments. And the clinical informatics team also deliver weekly targeted 121 coaching sessions across our sites. There are plenty of engagement activities taking place across the Trust, and I would urge colleagues to look out for these and speak to their digital champions and clinical sponsors for further support and information.”