By Dr Jo Garland

“A digital solution is a quick win. It makes a huge impact immediately, and helps those people within the NHS that need support the most - the healthcare staff.”

— Dr Jo Garland

Following a year of unthinkable strain on the NHS, there is consensus now, more than ever, that healthcare workers deserve more support. It’s clear to me that a move towards the digitisation of clinical and operational tasks will assist in facilitating what has now become a necessity.

From tracking observations, to improving the efficiency of portering - the digitisation of tasks means moving away from paper. A move away from paper enables enhanced task management across the hospital; improving inter-department communication and allowing multidisciplinary teams to work closely with each other. The scope for the transformation that digital task management could have within healthcare is endless, and ultimately it is an opportunity to give staff the tools they need to make their jobs less complicated.

The implications of paper

In 2021, it’s frustrating that tasks are often still recorded on paper. Whilst I understand that going digital is a daunting prospect for trusts, the benefits outweigh the risks. It’s no longer sustainable for healthcare professionals to risk missing tasks or losing paper. These also have implications for information governance and colleagues have no visibility of your activity in realtime, making it more difficult to manage resources as well as having no proper handover of tasks at the end of shifts or audit trail.

How digital solutions can help

I’ve seen for myself how digital solutions can make a huge difference. I can clearly recall the difficulty I had remembering all the tasks needing done whilst being bleeped repeatedly throughout the day. It took my time away from where I really needed to be and focused it on trying to recall all that I needed to do. Using technology like Infinity, a digital task management platform, would have truly transformed my daily life, allowing me to have all of the required information at my fingertips and enabling me to have more informed conversations with patients and colleagues.

Digital task management also allows staff located across hospitals or in different sites to create a virtual team. Users are able to see all of the information that they need, updated in real-time, and effectively manage their individual workload workload. One user told me how their old system seemed “primitive” in comparison to the solution they are using now, another that the solution had “really fine-tuned the way we work”. User feedback is the reason why I so firmly believe that every NHS trust should make this change.

A tool to help NHS staff

During this past year, the Covid-19 pandemic has undeniably necessitated a new way of working, and both acute and community settings have had to adopt technological solutions to cope with a significant and sustained influx of patients whilst having to control and track infections in patients and staff.

Not only were 15% of NHS staff tracking their mandatory lateral flow tests through the platform, Infinity also had an impact on healthcare professionals who were working from home whilst self-isolating or shielding. They could still log on at home, see what their colleagues were doing, and continue supporting them. One nurse working in a busy community rapid response team told me that she could see administrative tasks in Infinity as they were created by staff at the point of care (for example chasing blood tests or radiology results), liaise with family or other community teams, and update the status of these tasks. Members of the team and senior managers did not have to spend time calling busy colleagues to confirm that tasks were in progress or completed, saving significant time. Had I had something like this when I was working in hospitals, I know that time spend trying to track tasks would have been significantly reduced and that I would have been able to structure my day more efficiently.

“The scope for the transformation that digital task management could have within healthcare is endless, and ultimately it is an opportunity to give staff the tools they need to make their jobs less complicated.”

— Dr Jo Garland

NHS staff feel ‘overworked’ and at ‘serious risk of burnout’, but tools like Infinity can help to bring them together within and across teams. NHS hospital and community care requires input from everyone - ranging from clinicians to porters to managers - all caring for the same patients, and it’s not always easy to unite different teams to foster a sense of teamwork and coordinate activity.

With a growing focus on the wellbeing of NHS workers who have been significantly affected by the pandemic, it seems obvious to me that a digital solution should be a priority. A digital solution is a quick win. It makes a huge impact immediately, and helps those people within the NHS that need support the most - the healthcare staff.

About the Author

Dr Jo Garland worked as a General Practitioner in North West London for several years, and prior to joining Infinity, was the Clinical Lead at a healthcare startup, leading health coaching programmes for patients with long-term conditions and reducing inappropriate A&E admissions. She is passionate about joining-up care between primary, secondary, and community care within the NHS.