Community nursing teams in Bristol have implemented mobile working successfully, Bristol Community Health (BCH) said. It is one of the first NHS providers to have rolled out mobile working across the organisation for its community nursing teams and the citywide phlebotomy service.
The decision was made after a pilot was carried out across some of the community nursing teams with the TotalMobile app and was successful.
Benefits identified from the pilot included: improved staff satisfaction and patient experience, increased patient facing time per working shift, improved clinical documentation and improved data quality.
Hannah Burge, one of the community nurses from BCH, said that the app had changed their working lives for the better. 'All the documentation is done there and then with the patient and so not only is it more accurate but you don't need to keep any vital bits of information in your head to remember later.'
Ms Burge said that the software was 'easy and simple to use'.
'I had strong reservations about it in the beginning and I was its biggest critic, but after using it for a couple of days my reservations were gone,' she added
Adele Nash, also a BCH community nurse, added, 'We can view and update patient records whilst with our patients which not only adds a quality benefit, it also saved us time.'
During the pilot, mobile working project lead Zoe Harris worked closely with TotalMobile to ensure that the solution met the needs of staff and patients across BCH. 'What made our mobile-working pilot a success was fantastic staff involvement and engagement from the very beginning, ensuring our TotalMobile solution was fit for purpose in order to release more time to care.'
Julia Clarke, Chief Executive of BCH, said 'After thorough testing of the TotalMobile app platform, we are really pleased to be able to launch it across more of our healthcare teams in Bristol. We are always striving to provide high quality patient care, whilst becoming more efficient and productive as a team. We believe that by providing our teams with the flexibility that mobile working offers, we will be supporting our teams to achieve these goals.'