Every Time, Everywhere, Everyone: Designing a Comprehensive Clinical Communication Strategy

To address the issues around device availability and unreliable access to handheld documentation workflows, the communication team at Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) in Melbourne, Australia, decided to equip all rostered, role-based clinical staff with smartphones that supported Epic’s Secure Chat, a secure messaging app connected to a patient’s chart. They set a goal to make this the first-line platform and method of clinical communication across the organization. These smartphones also came equipped with clinical applications such as Haiku and Rover, which support documentation and other clinical workflows. Nurses have seen the most dramatic improvement in their work, with individual devices helping them to complete nursing documentation on Rover at an average of 26 minutes faster and to increase their barcode scanning adherence by 74%. After receiving these devices, surveys on one ward recorded a 9% improvement in overall nurse satisfaction with the EHR and a 17% improvement in the number of respondents who perceived the EHR as enabling efficiency in their clinical workflows.

How They Did It:

• Audited communication to understand how staff communicated and what devices they used
• Purchased smartphones and installed Secure Chat to establish standardized communication pathways
• Created new resources and policies to facilitate finding the right person and communication method

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