Staff from all disciplines take part in Unity full dress rehearsal

February 14, 2019

As many of you would surely have noticed there were many staff sporting green T-shirts around the Trust this week. We have had staff from all disciplines, implementers and members of the Unity team taking part in a major rehearsal of its functions in various areas of our Trust this week. We managed to rehearse in multiple departments and put Unity ‘to the test’ in high flow areas (such as AMU and ED), base wards and outpatient areas. We confirmed that multiple drugs could be transcribed using teams of doctors. This prepared the ward staff to perform their regular tasks including drug administration in a safe and secure manner. Clinical notes could be created, procedures and tests performed and the discharge process completed electronically.

A fundamental improvement in our daily processes is that all the above activities could be performed in a secure and traceable manner after confirming the patient’s identity using barcoded wristbands. Test patients also had investigations carried out, recorded and endorsed within Unity and this is a significant improvement to our daily working pattern. Having the added security of electronically verifying the patient’s identity and their specimens going to the laboratories is a significant advantage in helping to reduce clinical and procedural errors.

We have had a huge surge in the procurement and provision of workstations, laptops, printers and scanners alongside improvements in our Wi-Fi access. Feedback from the front line has been generally more positive on this occasion and issues with network black spots and complex workflows will be targeted in the coming weeks. A detailed analysis of the feedback will be put into a report in the near future and this will help guide us in targeting future resources and developments to new business processes. I am sure the outputs will be positive in either confirming what we already know but also in showing us where further focused developments will be required.

I would like to thank all staff, project team and IT staff who were actively involved in the rehearsal and look forward to further engagement with other departments and teams in forthcoming weeks to get the Trust ready for go-live.

#HellomynameisAsh, and I am the Chief Clinical Information Officer

#Unityiscoming