Authors (including presenting author) :
LAU KH(1), TANG SL(1), CHAN WY(1), CHUNG WY(1)
Affiliation :
(1) Intensive Care Unit, United Christian Hospital
Introduction :
Providing all-round services, working in shift pattern and sacrificing part of personal life are inevitable for nurses. To cultivate happy staff, traditionally nurses are allowed to have duty request to maximizing their capability in work-life balance, family and/or developmental needs that promote staff satisfaction and engagement. For decades, duty requests were made in paper format. Human errors occurred occasionally that negatively affect efficiency of duty planning. In 2019, duty request process was enhanced by utilizing smart technology to develop a new electronic duty request system to increase effectiveness.
Objectives :
1. Maintain staff engagement by entertaining duty request
2. Increase accessibility of duty request
3. Increase accuracy of duty request
4. Increase efficacy of roster planning
Methodology :
Background
Nurses have been empowered to express their needs by making duty request that is compatible with their personal lives. It also allows nurses rest on preferred period that increase productivity potentially. Generally, duty requests will be considered if it complies with the well-establish house rules that concerning department operation and fairness among the team.
Previously, nurses take turn to make requests on a master draft placing in nurse station. After requesting period, duty planner will check the requests against the rules and transcribe it to another draft which is tedious and time consuming, human errors may occur. For example, making request on a wrong row that belongs to another nurse unintentionally and committing transcription error while handling numerous requests. Errors not only failed the intended request but also affected normal shift pattern of other unnecessarily while fulfilling false request.
Enhancement
New add-on electronic duty request system was built on the computer network sharing form existing Clinical Information System (CIS) to facilitate duty request. Accessibility is enhanced as it is accessible via every CIS computer. Nurses can gain access while monitoring the critically ill patients. All requests are transparent to every user. However, users can only make or modify request with unique login identification code that human error is minimized. Setting certain confinements in the system help implementing house rules and maintaining fairness, it also cut off request automatically. The system can generate a request summary by a few clicks that reduces transcription error and increases efficacy.
Result & Outcome :
The system was welcomed by nurses as accessibility and efficacy increased. Handling process is simplified, and errors occurred in paper format were eliminated. Patient safety is enhanced indirectly as distractions from duty issues are diminished.
