Bedside devices save 4,000 hours of nurse time, says trust

A major London hospital trust believes it has saved about 4,000 hours of nurse time by connecting integrated bedside devices with an electronic patient record system.

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust started linking the two resources in a quarter of wards in January last year.

Nurses across the NHS are required to regularly measure patient observations to generate a National Early Warning Score (NEWS).

The data collected previously had to be inputted manually into the patients' records, but the integrated bedside devices have meant it is done automatically.

'Significant time-saving'

A trust spokesperson said: 'The new automated process reduces the time required to take parameters by 50%, with over a minute saved each time a set of observations is taken. This quickly converts to significant time-saving. Over the last year we estimate that nearly 4,000 hours of time have been saved.

'This benefits patient safety as it takes away the risk of errors in transcribing the results, and generates a NEWS to alert staff to any risk of deterioration more quickly. It also releases more time for staff to provide patient care.'

The devices, provided by Welch Allyn with funding from the Nursing Technology Fund, have been installed in 14 clinical areas, supporting 243 beds.

The trust intends to roll out the devices across the trust and introduce alerts for early identification of sepsis.

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