Heartbeat: Unity go-live – a super user’s perspective

December 12, 2019

Having worked in emergency departments for more than a decade, I’ve learned that the two most important aspects of managing the shop floor are patient safety and patient flow.

I was really happy when I knew that the Trust was working with Cerner. We finally decided to take a leap of faith into the fully digital world and, for me, the experience was amazing.

Despite the excitement, I recalled the challenges and frustrations encountered during my previous two cutover experiences. A lot of colleagues had doubts about whether the move would be worth it.

Their concerns were understandable, but when it comes to patient safety and effective clinical practice, comprehensive IT solutions always have the upper hand.

This is proved through better prescribing, fewer clinical and drug-related errors, safe archiving and easy access to medical records.

More than this, Unity is a one-stop-shop where we can document, prescribe, share information, review and endorse results in a single interface that pools all patient information – past and present.

The cutover period was challenging on many levels. First of all, we had to ensure that all staff were well-trained, understood how to use Unity and the workflows they would have to follow. Secondly, we needed enough staff in place to deal with the initial delays. Emergency departments don’t have the luxury of booking fewer patients – our front door never shuts. Finally, we had to change our mind-set from documenting on paper, using three to four IT systems at once, to focusing on Unity.

Cutover itself was interesting. We started at 5am on Saturday morning with 20 patients in the department registered on the old IT systems already. When we had our first patient registered on Unity, I felt a huge sense of relief. As more colleagues came on shift they showed the same commitment and never gave up.

The following two weeks were slightly bumpy as everyone was trying to learn how to communicate through Unity. It was a big change. The support of digital champions, floorwalkers and super users proved very effective.

Thanks to our great ED team, we all looked after each other. Many colleagues started their own initiatives to help everyone through any early difficulties. We had a resuscitation trolley full of biscuits, chocolate, snacks and fruit. A Unity-corn joined our family for good luck too. I also made a series of short videos on our ED homepage to help with specific Unity procedures.

We understand that the two-week cutover period is just the beginning but Unity has already started to show its great potential. As we become more familiar with it, I am confident that we will realise the full capabilities of the system.