10 new laptops were funded for our community nurses.
Benefits include:
- Significantly better patient care especially around pain relief, symptom control & multi-agency support
- Minimal down time uploading/downloading and trying to connect to patient’s home networks or utilising paper systems
- Access to a myriad of additional support services/providers in real time while with patient
- Mobile Wi-Fi connection ensures more reliable and secure connection
- Less reliance on paper records by nurses, thus reducing admin resource drains
- Faster and more accurate scheduling of appointments or ancillary support services
- Ability to provide online medical access (GP’s, district nurses etc) if patient has neither IT equipment nor internet access
- Reduce numbers of visits to hospice per week by community nurses to upload records and free up more time to clinical care
- Verify medications and treatments online out in the community
- Minimise any potential mistakes owing to paperwork or handwriting interpretation
- Ensure consistent treatment and medications
- Reduce transmission risks where applicable
- Telecare – consult with patient, family, and other clinical practitioners in real time
- Access to British National Formulary for palliative care, pain, and symptom control advice
- Facilitate a more flexible and fluid work pattern for nurses’ rounds
- Enable remote virtual learning for updating clinical skills
- Access to online translation services in patients’ home
- Promote equality especially relevant in our rurally deprived community by overcoming transport, mobility, or financial barriers to accessing healthcare
- Real time access to Just In Case (JIC) pre-approved medications list for individual patients so clinicians can access symptom or pain relief prescriptions if their care needs escalate
- Support robust safeguarding and care polices though up to date access to multi agency records
- Real time access/updating of EMIS records out in the community and third-party clinical care providers notes
- 74% of community nurses find these IT systems a more reliable way of working compared to paper documents (approx. 50% time saving) which have the potential to get damaged or disordered
- Faster and better dissemination of medical notes