Chapter 14
Case 3 - The acute medicine department

Excerpt from the book....

Like many hospitals in the UK, this one has been trying to cope with the reduction in junior doctors' hours. Reducing hours means increasing reliance on the shift system; more shifts mean more handovers; and handovers carry with them the risk of reducing continuity of care. The consultants asked whether handhelds could assist in providing this continuity.

The hospital had an excellent small manual for the staff, called the Red Book. It detailed important information: the local telephone directory, important protocols, and other small nuggets that helped the clinician get the job done. Unfortunately, in an informal survey of the junior doctors, scarcely any had heard of it and none used it. People simply did not carry it. Although it was available on every ward, the location was always different, and not all the staff were aware of how to find it quickly. The hospital has an excellent librarian, who ensured a copy of the text was available on the high-quality internal website. However, few of the wards had yet been equipped to be able to access it. Overall, the availability of good information was not good enough. Again, the consultants asked whether handhelds had a contribution to make.

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