The kennel door clipboard
Each hospitalised patient has a paper sheet on its kennel door. The vet writes the plan. Nurses tick off medications, fluids, walks and observations through the day. The whiteboard in the prep room lists patients, what they are in for and anything urgent.
It works on a quiet day. On a busy one, with eight inpatients and a shift change at seven, a tick is missed, a dose is given twice because the sheet was not updated, or the vet changes the plan and the nurse is working from the old one. At discharge, someone rebuilds the charges from the sheet, and some treatments are left off.
Why the paper system strains
Paper sheets are simple and quick, which is why they are used. But they cannot alert anyone when a treatment is due, they are only readable at the kennel, and they have to be copied into the practice management system for charging and records.
Shift changes rely on a verbal handover, and whatever is said in the handover is not recorded anywhere.
The vet in the consult room cannot see the ward either. To check whether a patient has eaten, had its pain relief or passed urine, they have to walk through, find the sheet and read handwriting. Owners ringing for an update get whatever the person on the phone can find out by walking to the kennel.
And when a sheet runs to a second page, or gets wet, or is taken off the door for the vet to read, the record for that patient is briefly somewhere else entirely.
What paper costs on a busy ward
| Problem | Consequence |
|---|---|
| No due-time alerts | Treatments given late when the ward is busy |
| Plan changes | Nurses work from an out-of-date sheet |
| Charging from paper | Treatments left off the bill |
| Handover | Information lost between shifts |
| Records | Sheets have to be scanned or transcribed afterwards |
What is given to each patient is a clinical decision for your vets and nurses. We build the tool that holds the plan and the record.
A digital ward board
- A ward screen in the prep room showing every inpatient, what is due in the next hour and what is overdue.
- Treatment plans entered by the vet on a tablet or PC, with times and frequencies.
- Recording by nurses as each task is done, with who and when, from a tablet at the kennel.
- Plan change alerts so the team sees immediately when the vet changes something.
- Handover notes attached to each patient at shift change.
- Charging. Each recorded treatment is passed to the patient's invoice in your practice management system where it allows, or listed for checking at discharge.
Several practice management systems already have hospital or whiteboard modules. If yours does and it is simply not being used, we will tell you and help set it up instead.
A ward the whole team can see
Anyone walking into the prep room can see what is due and what is overdue. Plan changes appear immediately. Handover is on screen. At discharge, the invoice already has the treatments on it.
The records are complete without anyone scanning sheets, and the vet can check a patient's progress from the consult room.
Nurses often find the biggest change is at the start of a shift. Instead of reading every sheet on every kennel, they see the whole ward on one screen, with the handover notes and anything due in the first hour. It is a calmer start to a job that rarely has calm moments.
Is your ward run on paper like this?
- Treatment sheets are on paper on kennel doors
- Plan changes are made on paper and sometimes missed
- Handover at shift change is verbal only
- Charges are rebuilt from sheets at discharge
- Your practice management system's hospital module is not used