Authors (including presenting author) :
Chan CWO(1), Chung PY(1), Poon KH(1), Cheng KM(1), Chau WL(1), Chiu SP(1), Lee WL(1)
Affiliation :
(1) Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit, Kwai Chung Hospital
Introduction :
Psychiatric nurses strive to manage diverse responsibilities in everyday clinical practice. The clerical aspect of nursing care is often susceptible to human errors and burnout (Gesner, Dykes, Zhang & Gazarian, 2022). In usual practice, nurses mainly update patient conditions by handwriting, oral handover and looking up stacks of case notes manually. The heavy clerical workload is considered time-consuming. In a sector so heavily influenced by paperwork, there is a clear need for digitalised documentation initiatives (Uzun & Cerit, 2023). The Smart In-Patient Management System (SIMS) was developed to facilitate psychiatric nurses in minimizing human error and promoting effective access and retrieval of clinical information.
Objectives :
1. To streamline the clerical workflow for nurses in order to reduce human error.
2. To reduce the consumption of A4 paper.
Methodology :
SIMS is a centralized platform that utilizes Microsoft Excel and HA Drive for secure, easy and prompt exchange of clinical information. By inputting patient information including admission date, legal status and various risk parameters, SIMS automatically consolidates all data into standardized tables of summary with the help of spreadsheet formulas and commands. There are tables related to administration (Bed list, Due see list, Legal status list, Primary nurse rota) and Cue Card related to risk alerts (DASA list, SO list, Fall list, Choking list). SIMS also processes calculations including expiry date of compulsory status and length of stay. Nurses may access SIMS via desktop computer through HA Drive or myHR App. Notification alerts facilitate real-time communication for efficient clinical management and teamwork.
Result & Outcome :
In this pilot project, thirty-two nurses from a psychiatric intensive care unit were recruited from 1st Oct 2024 to 10th Jan 2025. The average time for SIMS staff training was 1.5 hours. The downtime hour was less than 0.5 hours. Notably, 85% of nurses strongly agreed that SIMS was user-friendly. 93.8% of nurses strongly agreed that SIMS can mitigate manual error and missing records. A reduction in patient information retrieval time from an average 180 seconds to 60 seconds was reported. Respectively 87.5% and 75% of nurses believed that care efficiency and care quality had improved. Weekly paper consumption was significantly reduced by 93% following the implementation of SIMS.
SIMS is a user-friendly smart initiative with high feasibility and acceptability in the psychiatric setting. It helps to reduce human errors, enhance team communication, promote paperless hospital and empower nurses to effectively allocate resources on direct patient care.
