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Cost-effective Essence of Care reporting
March 29, 2010
An article published by the Nursing Times reports that nurses often feel overburdened by audits, and a new booklet published by an NHS trust has helped provide a way of sharing advice. However, as the NHS engages in new technology, Tortrix have developed a software solution that replaces the need for paper-based reporting.
Based on the Essence of Care initiative developed by the Department of health in 2001, the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust has produced a booklet detailing benchmarks for nursing care and enabling staff to self-assess their own performance.
The Essence of Care initiative encourages staff to monitor patient experience according to set guidelines, and engage in the auditing of patient observations to ensure best practise in patient care. The contribution of practitioners' clinical interests is essential in sharing experience and expertise, in order to build staff confidence and provide resources.
Developing a reliable reporting system that emphasises the fundamentals of care is extremely important for nursing staff. The report by the Nursing Times underlined the importance of collaborating with other nursing staff across the departments and even across the trust to encourage best practise in implementing the benchmarks.
The case study reported in the Nursing Times demonstrated that having an easily accessible tool detailing the benchmarks for high quality nursing care resulted in improved standards, and engaged the nursing staff in taking responsibility for providing the fundamentals of care.
In response to this, Tortrix have developed the Essence of Care tool, a software application that consolidates the guidelines developed by the Department of Health and provides an online tool that allows staff to share experience and expertise across departments and directorates. It offers a cost-effective means of sharing information across a secure network and avoids the time-consuming and unreliable process of using paper-based audit tools.
The software allows nursing staff to input their own data, reporting patient observations and guidelines met. It then generates graphs and images for review, using a clinical dashboard tool to present the information in an accessible format.
The software incorporates the government guidelines and produces a collaborative tool that not only encourages staff autonomy for their own performance, but also offers a useful management tool across departments and even trusts as a whole.
The Essence of Care software will be launched shortly and used at George Eliot Hospital in Nuneaton, where similar auditing tools such as the Saving Lives Assessment developed by Tortrix is in use, encouraging best practise in infection control in a ward environment.
Tortrix works closely with the NHS to provide cost-effective software solutions that enable trusts to provide high quality and safe patient services. The Essence of Care tool is part of our eCare suite, designed to accelerate time-consuming processes, ensure accuracy of patient records, and encourage best practice in patient healthcare.
