This picture is an example of a “WOW” also known as a workstation on wheels. These computers are new to my department and came with our electronic health record system change that we experienced almost two years ago. Prior to this change we did not have medication or patient scanning in our department. We simply printed out our medication order, went to the pyxis, obtained medications and used our paper order as our way of verifying the patient and medication safely. Changing over to the new electronic health record system EPIC was a big change for our department and staff members and these Wow’s didn’t help due to one main reason, the scanner was attached to the computer.
I would have to go back to the identification stage of the design process as I was able to identify the problem within my first couple of hours of my shift when we were using this new system of scanning the patient and medication. The scanner is attached to the computer with a short straight cord. You must be close to the patient to be able to scan them and then the medication. The problem is that emergency department rooms are small, and patients are usually bed bound and may not be able to move their extremities to assist you in scanning their bracelet. There were and still are many times that my computer either comes rolling into my patients’ feet at the end of the stretcher, or into a visitor by accident due to me pulling the scanner closer to the patient. When we identified this problem to our management team, we asked why we didn’t have wireless scanners like the rest of the WOW’s in other units do. We were then given longer, spiraled cords due to the amount of cost it would be to change out all the scanners in our department. If our nurses were involved in the identification stage of the design process this could have been something that was foreseen, and we could have acted on this design prior to it being instituted into our department, saving the hospital time, and money.
With the SCAMPERING method in mind I would use SUBSTITUTE toward a solution to this problem. I would substitute the scanners in our department to wireless scanners. We have an overabundance of computers and we can take the eight computers that are used by nurses daily for scanning and slowly start to change them over to wireless scanning. This would improve our employee satisfaction and may also improve our scanning percentage that at times suffers due to the amount of limited space and fast paced environment we work in. Some nurses chose to “click off” the medication versus scanning, or even scan the patient’s bedside labels due to the straight and spiral cords that do not allow the nurse to reach the patient. This poses a threat to our patient’s and patient safety that could be corrected by simply changing over to eight wireless scanners. The cost of the wireless scanners should never outweigh the cost of patient safety.
Currently the attached scanner is on the usability portion of the hierarchy of design. There is a major issue with the scanners function and usability due to the attached component. The attached scanners greatly affect day to day operations of the department as many nurses look for the computers that have a spiral cord as it may give them a bit more space. But we still have computers that have the straight cord. After scampering and substitution to wireless scanners, they would not only be functional, they would improve usability, proficiency and reliability from staff.
