Enhancing The Patient ICU Experience Through Tablets
By Megan Williams, contributing writer
The simple tablet could be a revolutionary new offering for your healthcare IT clients. As they look for practical solutions to improving the patient experience, simplicity will be a big sell, and an article in the Wall Street Journal supports that approach.
A Friendlier ICU
Mobile devices and apps are being used to combat a broader definition of harm, according to the WSJ. When it comes to issues like disrespectful care, health IT solutions take on a slightly different role.
As the ICU stands now, patients suffer a general loss of privacy, control, and autonomy as their visits leave them hooked up to machinery and facing infections, blood clots, and pneumonia. Efforts have been made to further personalize the ICU experience and include patients and their families in decisions, largely because of concerns over interference with workflows.
In response to this situation, Johns Hopkins has launched Project Emerge, an effort around data to gather information from records systems and monitoring equipment to gauge a patient’s state. It tracks five medical complications overall, but also plans to track softer metrics like “goals of care” and “respect and dignity.”
It’s doing this by giving patients and families tablets to record goals, learn about machines and monitors, and ask questions of the medical team.
At the University Of California, San Francisco, the Hopkins model has been adopted. Tablets are used to help patients in situations with large numbers of clinicians treating them identify who they are and their area of specialization. According to UCSF advisory council member Michelle Young, “There are so many patients on life support, and ventilators, and there are IVs and bags everywhere, and you just don’t feel as if you have any control ... Patients need more transparency and access and education on how to navigate the ICU.”
Benefits Of The Tablet
MobiHealth News provides more details on the Johns Hopkins project that involves additional levels of tech.
The process begins with an electronic harms monitor that tracks vital signs and tasks that need to be completed. Staff is notified with color-coded alerts when something needs to be completed.
On the patient side, tablets give family members input on what’s going on the back end. They can request aids like help washing their patient’s hair or getting up to walk.
In all of the projects discussed, hospitals found that patients do feel like they’re being treated with dignity and respect in the ICU.