Weeknote #16 — back to it!
A shameless plug, we have some great openings in our team, they do close tomorrow night at midnight — so if you’re interested, or know someone who it — get in there quick!
It’s been an extraordinary last couple of months, and I’ve dropped the rhythm on #weeknotes (what are weeknotes) — but I’m going to try and get back into it.
I’ll focus on one theme from the last couple of months in this note.
With possibly the only exception being IT colleagues, I believe people do not come to work to “use a computer”. Working in the NHS, I work with some incredible colleagues that all come to work with a common purpose — to provide high-quality, patient-centred care.
Digital and technology should “enable” our colleagues to provide the best possible care for those we are here to serve, not slow down / constrain.
Theatres have been having an tough time with technology, especially over the last couple of months. There are a number of different challenges that are being experienced that compound the overall experience with technology for clinicians in Theatres, resulting in some unhappy / frustrated users (understandably).
Just over four weeks ago, we formed a dedicated group of individuals (clinical, operational and technical) to grip the problem(s), unravel them and start resolving / driving improvements. We’ve had a daily drumbeat (or dare I say, stand-up) focusing on what we’ve achieved that day, what is tomorrow, and what is blocked.
I love spending time out with our end users. I have been out into Theatres on a number of occasions in my last year at CWFT — but not during procedures (i.e. when the tech is being used). I am grateful for Dr Alison Hare, Dr Kulkarni and Dr Marcela Vizcaychipi for facilitating and allowing my team to observe the tech challenges during procedures across a number of different theatre sessions, in multiple locations. I must say, its been a while since I’ve observed a clinical procedure and I really was quite nervous — but the team welcomed me and put me at ease.
We have managed to drive out technical variation and get to the root cause of a number of issues over the last couple of weeks which is improving the experience for users.
What is of particular concern for me though is the number of barriers that we have put up (perhaps unconsciously, or maybe even consciously over the years) that make it “so hard” to people to tell IT there is a problem. ServiceNow (our IT Service Management toolset) is the beating heart of all that we do in IT (I try to frame it with clinicians — it’s our Cerner / EPR platform, for IT). There is so much we can do proactively to monitor our platforms and services, but if there is an issue — we are here to serve, please please please tell us there is a problem and we’ll not just fix it — we’ll try and find ways to avoid it from recurring.
I am leading a piece of work to refresh our self-service experience (or, one of the front-doors into IT) over the next month / two anyway to benefit the entire org, but this will tie in well for Theatres and we have huge amounts of user research/feedback that will help drive a modern fit-for-purpose experience.
Getting structured information to IT is key to getting the problem to the right person/team, at the right time in order to resolve as swiftly as possible. I genuinely believe we can do something better/smarter with areas like Theatres.
The primary concern of clinicians in Theatres is the patient, not technology. As a IT / technology team — we already know what the Theatre setup is (devices, locations, ports, endpoints, etc) — when the patient is on the table in front of the clinician, every second is valuable and why do we need to ask the user to repeat this info every time? We’ve pinned down a problem statement, and are exploring a simple (but hopefully effective) solution which looks something like:
- Scan QR code on device (each QR code is unique to device) — takes a few seconds
- Clinician describes what the problem was — takes a few seconds
- optional — add a picture / screenshot of the error / problem — takes a few seconds
- Submit
This is all done within ServiceNow. We will then look also at our operational process (for managing these issues), what our service wrap is and the SLA/performance & quality measures that we can drive as we move forward.
I’ve also had a number of interesting conversations around IoT / connected devices and monitoring of connected devices directly feeding into our ITSM. Definitely of interest, and one to feed in to longer term planning as a tech team (don’t let perfect be the enemy of something good).
If there is a technical fault in Theatres — the sole focus will be on the patient, and the decision to revert to a business continuity plan (paper) will always be made by the clinical team in Theatres. If we can break down the barriers to reporting issues — we can not just solve them, but use the data/insights to look at patterns and trends and take a more proactive approach to tackling issues.
So, a huge investment of work over the last four weeks, lots still to do. A huge thank you to all involved. I’ll aim to share more as we move forward, and will also be planning a retro to look back at what went well, what did not and what we can do better in the future (i.e. to avoid us being in this same position again).
What I’m looking forward to next week:
- Shortlisting vacancies that closed (see above)
- All-hands for Application Operations & Delivery
- Exec deep-dive into IT — our opportunity to give insight into our successes, our challenges and our focus as we move forward
- Seeing our new self-service experience take shape — with a product at the end of the week we can start to test
- Prepping for a pitch on WC 1st Aug to take Service Now out into the sector for change management for CernerEPR (our EPR across North West London)
- A follow-up with Will from NHS Blood & Transplant on all things IT Service Management— so many challenges we have are not unique to our own organisation — we can do so much more to learn from each other!
