What Nurses at a Digital Exemplar Trust are doing to drive transformation

On 26th August 2022, the Digital Nursing Programme team had the opportunity to visit the University Southampton NHS Foundation Trust.

We were welcomed by Sarah Bradburn, CNIO, and introduced to nurses and midwives from across the Trust who are driving forward digital transformation. They showcased the impressive portfolio of work they have delivered in this space as well as future projects, demonstrating why the Trust is a global digital exemplar.

Alongside Gail Byrne, Chief Nurse, Sarah has led an assessment of how the Trust is performing against the success measures outlined in Guidance for Nursing on ‘What Good Looks Like’. It was encouraging to see the progress that has been made already, and valuable to understand how the Trust has prioritised certain areas of the programme. ?

The common denominator of the trust, ranging all the way from maternity through to end-of-life care, you could see all projects focus had the patient at the front and centre.

Image: Sarah Bradburn CNIO - Welcoming Introduction at the University Hospital Southampton?

Badgernet

We were introduced to the challenges introducing Badgernet, a maternity health record system through the pandemic. The team faced many challenges with training and ensuring staff felt confident in the system, and thanks to the tireless efforts of Alison Hopkins and Amy Bisson, this was achieved – well done to both for their work!

This will provide the Smart Foundations of a digital record from birth for patients enabling a future full of data and system impact.

Image: Alison Hopkins and Amy Bisson - UHSFT Maternity?

Neonatal

Charlie Pugh spoke about neonatal care, where we saw the impressive use MetaVision to maximise the nursing record for the benefit of patients.

Charlie explained how trending data is used to support families, by showing them the improvements made, with complete medical records that enhance micro-calculations and dosages. This was an excellent example of nurses maximising a system to its full potential, linking to success measure 6 – Improve Care.

Nurses in the neonatal department with Charlie’s leadership were provided with the information and skills to support digital care pathways and involved citizens in their care delivery through the presentation of data, enabling citizens to be involved in their care.

Image: Charlie Pugh Neonatal Care use of MetaVision

My Medical Records

“The ability to access personal healthcare information is key to success, and nursing is best placed to enable and support citizen engagement.”

Guidance for Nursing on What Good Looks Like, Success Measure 5 – Empower People

It was interesting to hear how the trust are empowering patients to lead on shared decision making for the care they receive. My Medical Records is a personal health record (PHR) they use to give patients greater choice.

By having an online portal patients can access their results and the hospital is able to keep in contact with as guidance changes, and support patients in a timely manner with messages instead of them having to wait for return phone calls.

The nurse led initiatives here were not only award winning but a great example of nurses leading and identifying opportunities to join up patient care.

My Medical Records is also used with cancer care, allowing patient initiated follow up – all these various features have resulted in reduction of unnecessary visits to the hospital.

This is a great example of success measure 2 – Smart Foundations from the Guidance for Nursing on What Good Looks Like as the nurses were encouraged to increase the use of the functionality to expand the service in a safe and controlled manor.

Image: Claire Marsh - Cancer Patient Initiated Follow Up?

Critical Care Information System

Just before the COVID-19 pandemic, Southampton also rolled out a standardised version of their critical care information system. This benefitted staff throughout the pandemic as they were able to work across the multiple clinical areas without needing to learn a new system in each different unit.

The care delivered through the pandemic was therefore far safer than it would have been prior and is a great demonstration of success measure 3 – Safe Practice, by using a consistently safe process and system nurses were able to provide the best care possible at the lowest risk.

Image: Helen Hill - MetaVision Critical Care Information System?

Digital inpatient noting

“Driving a supportive culture and enabling structure from board to point of practice.”

Guidance for Nursing on What Good Looks Like, Success Measure 1 – Well Led

Something else the trust has been working on was their digital inpatient noting. It was great to hear the passion and pride of Natasha, the ward manager on F8, about her teams involvement in developing the record, a great example of ensuring nurses are empowered to practice and lead in a digitally enabled health and social care system!

Final reflection

It was fantastic to see the work being carried out by University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust to ensure nursing practice is fully supported by the use of digital technology.

The visit emphasised the importance of visiting care providers across the country, as they present the opportunity to learn from the challenges and successes faced at local level, allowing national policy to be informed so we are able to give the tools for all to lead on transformation and show the positive impact digital has on patient care.

To find out more about the work of the CNIO team, visit the Digital Nursing Programme FutureNHS space.

About the authors

Dr Natasha Phillips is the Chief Nursing Information Officer (CNIO) for England, leading the Nursing and Midwifery workforce to use data and technology.?

Natasha is an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London, completing her thesis on ward leadership. She was included on the 2022 HSJ: Wildcard list.

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Louise Cave is a Florence Nightingale Fellow, leading on the digital research workstream.

Louise's primary are of interest is using data enhance patient care. In 2021 she won the ‘Embracing Change’ Digital Star Award.

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