Over recent years there has been a fundamental shift in the care of our aging relatives and friends. There are many factors which have contributed to an increase in care being sought within a professional care setting, as opposed to the traditional family care giving situations. Improved career opportunities and existing financial constraints means that family members may not have the time or opportunity to look after aged parents/relatives. The development of more complex health care needs, including dementia and disabling conditions may also mean that spouses and family members, regardless of their desire and wishes are no longer able to care for their loved one at home.
NOVA takes pride in working with clinicians to ensure our product positively impacts on the experiences and clinical outcomes of residents and family members. As part of our research development, we attended focus groups and specifically asked for family and visitors feedback aiming to identify any areas of improvement that our product may be able to contribute to. Consensus opinion suggests that family members do express concern in relation to the time spent at the relatives bed side, families can often mistake computer time as a ‘waste of time’ and feel frustrated when they perceive nurses ‘sitting at the computer’ rather than with their relatives. In addition, family members also expressed concern in relation to falls, skin tears/injuries, care miscommunication, inadequate care provision and social isolation. In the majority of cases discussed it appeared to be the risk of these factors occurring rather than actual concerns of incidence.
With this feedback in mind NOVA acknowledge the importance of not only the clinical impact of our product but also the practicalities of using an electronic system. Therefore, a fundamental aim of the NOVA system was to ensure that the nurses and carers were able to achieve concise, accurate, descriptive and transparent documentation, within the shortest time and in the simplest way possible.
Clinicians expressed frustrations with some existing electronic systems which require duplicate information, repetitive and irrelevant data entries, and did not contribute to a ‘common sense’ approach to workload organisation and day to day care management. All of these experiences appeared to result in the same frustration – excessive screen time and less time with the residents.
The NOVA system has the capability to actively contribute to the reduction in computer/screen time, organise staff workload, and improve resident clinical documentation and outcomes. The NOVA system contributes to these fundamental factors by facilitating informative care assessments, individualised care plans and care schedules, in addition to automatically generating instructive and practical reports which significantly impact on the management of care, including the reduction of falls, skin tears, accidents and incidences.
We have achieved this by prioritising your concerns – you spoke, we listened and we would like to sincerely thank you for your invaluable insights.