How technology is freeing up nurses’ time to care for patients

Patients are being moved into beds on wards faster, and thousands of hours have been freed up for nurses to care for them, thanks to a new bed management system at Medway Maritime Hospital.

The state-of the art digital technology provides real-time visibility of the beds available across the hospital. As a result staff operating the system from the newly created Medway Care Coordination Centre, can see at a glance when a patient is waiting to be admitted, if beds are occupied, when beds need cleaning and are ready to be allocated, or have already been allocated, as well as when patients are due to be sent home.

Prior to introducing the system the clinical site team would visit each ward and speak to the nurses to find out how many discharges there were going to be that day. They could then work out how many beds were available, using pen and paper, before allocating beds to new patients.

Nick Sinclair, Chief Operating Officer for Medway NHS Foundation Trust, which operates the Gillingham-based hospital, said: “The system has completely changed the way the hospital operates and transformed the way we move patients in and out of beds across the hospital. This improves the flow of patients through the hospital, and helps get them to the bed they need quicker.

“It’s all about working smarter. As well as helping us to understand where bottlenecks existed, and managing our beds in a more efficient way, our staff now have access to the right information at the point when they need it, without logging into several different systems, or requiring multiple callouts to identify capacity and availability. In turn this is helping to improve staff experience and morale and support a better working environment.”