Angela Massey, Cardiff West Community Midwifery Team Leader, using a mobile device to log in patient details
The Community Midwifery team at Cardiff and Vale University Health Board has recently rolled out new mobile devices to help save time, reduce duplication and provide a better level of service to expectant mothers. The team recently presented this project at the Maternity, Midwifery and Baby conference in Birmingham.
The Maternity, Midwifery and Baby conference is a regional professional development forum for midwives, health visitors, other allied healthcare professionals and student midwives who wish to update their skills and knowledge around key issues. There were over 900 delegates in attendance, with only 20 posters chosen for presentation.
The background to the project is that traditionally, when visiting a patient in the community, a midwife would hand write notes on paper which wasted time and required duplication of effort with someone having to input this information back in the office. This led to discrepancies and inaccurate data collection, delays in inputting the information and low compliance with reporting figures for the national maternity indicators to Welsh Government.
The team looked at the traditional way of working and soon realised that there was a better way to carry out this task and began come up with a plan to streamline the process of booking pregnant women on to the patient information system using hand held devices.
The team were awarded funding for 85 devices to be used in the community. These devices would allow direct booking of pregnant women for maternity services onto the electronic maternity information system at their GP surgery or in a community setting. All of the mobile devices have now been rolled out into the community setting.
Kelly Kent, Outpatient and Community Midwifery Manager for Cardiff and Vale University Health Board said: “This is making a massive difference both to the pregnant lady and to the community midwives as women can be booked directly on to the appointments system while they are out in the community, often when they are still with the patient.
“We are seeing that the data being recorded through these devices is more accurate with better information reporting as part of data collection for Welsh Government Performance Indicators.
“We are using less paper, which means we are helping the environment and reducing how much we spend on office supplies. Community midwives no longer need to travel back to their base to input the information gathered during appointments, saving time and money.
“Being able to give an appointment to a lady when you are with her and also being able to confirm that it is suitable really improves the patient experience, putting patients at the centre of everything we do.”
