Information gleaned from the Dorset Care Record is helping provide consultant psychiatrists treating patients with learning difficulties with real time additional information that they might have to wait hours or even days for.
Liz Eaton, PA to a consultant psychiatrist, said she goes to the Dorset Care Record as the first port of call to look for blood test results and other GP investigations, such as heart rates and whether the patient is smoking or drinking.
Liz, who works for Dorset HealthCare at the Forston Clinic, near Dorchester, has been using the DCR for the past six months and currently logs on every week.
“It saves me having to ring the GP surgery, the doctor having to find the information and then emailing me back and therefore saves time and money.”
The consultant psychiatrist holds clinics in Blandford and has at any one time up to 70 adults with learning difficulties on her books. Since the advent of movement restrictions these clinics have either moved to telephone or state of the art video consultations.
“I’ve seen how the DCR has been evolving over the last half year and how it has been increasing the amount of information that is now available from partner.
“I also find the DCR very useful if we have a patient leaving hospital as I see the discharge summary and the medications prescribed. It’s important that medications don’t contradict each other,” added Liz.
She has found the training useful and says the system is really easy to handle and understand: “There isn’t everything on the DCR that I’d like to have but sometimes that’s due to GPs not putting in things like height and weight of patients with learning difficulties, who have an annual check up with their doctor.”
Moving forward, she believes that the advent of more allergy information across the DCR Partnership will also be really important for her work.