Medical history and past and current medications information in the Dorset Care Record is helping clinical staff prepare patients for surgery.
Rebecca Bradley has worked in the University Hospitals Dorset (UHD) endoscopy pre-assessment department since October 2020 while her colleague, Simone King, has been in the endoscopy pre-assessment for the past 4 years.
Their work at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital includes gastro-scoping, colonoscopies and ERCP’s – a procedure that allows doctors to see pancreatic and bile ducts.
Rebecca says their work is vital in ensuring that patients are physically and medically fit ahead of their procedure and the depth of information in the Dorset Care Record (DCR) is extremely useful. She uses the DCR several times every day.
“I go straight in to the DCR from our eCaMIS (electronical medical record system) ahead of speaking to patients. It allows me to access their medical records and history.
When we go through the medical questionnaire with our patients, it is great to have all the information available prior to our assessment. Often our patients forget exactly what procedures and illnesses they had in the past, as well as what medications they are currently taking, especially as there are some patients who are taking 10-20 different types of medications,” she added.
Simone has been using the DCR for the past two years and finds the DCR intuitive: “It is really easy to find information, particularly around current medications, blood tests as well as illnesses that might not be on the hospital record.”
She feels that DCR would greatly benefit other medical staff including Consultants, particularly in the outpatient setting.
With Bournemouth so close to the Hampshire border, the unit tends to get quite a few referrals from Hampshire. GPs. Rebecca says it will be really helpful to have GP information across Wessex: “We need to both counties to be able to talk to each other,” she added.
As part of the drive for greater interoperability across the region, Wessex Care Records is ensuring that information held in the Hampshire Care and Health Information Record (CHIE) will be visible with DCR and vice versa over the next year.
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