The less time nurses and staff spend documenting their work in the medical record, the more time they can spend with patients.
Across Vanderbilt Medical Group, documentation recently got easier and faster with the introduction of ADVANCE, which stands for Advancement in Documentation Tools Valuable for Assessment in Nursing Clinical Excellence.
Developed in collaboration with nurses and staff, ADVANCE gathers all clinic nurse and staff documentation tools under a single tab in the electronic medical records system (StarPanel). As each electronic form is completed, the next form automatically opens. ADVANCE also cues patient education materials and users can customize ADVANCE to suit their workflow.
“We love it. It makes the visit go faster. And no step is left out. It’s so much easier to train nurses with ADVANCE,” said Terrie Lankford, LPN, nursing supervisor at Vanderbilt Health Brentwood Shoppes (a primary care clinic).
ADVANCE was conceived by Wendy Kiepek, R.N., MSHI, manager of enterprise health care innovation projects with the VMG Innovation Integration Team (also known as the I2 Team), Marla Carter, R.N., BSN, project manager with the I2 Team, and Jennifer Woods, R.N., MBA, senior operations engineer with the VMG Meaningful Use Group.
“ADVANCE is one of many staff-focused projects that the I2 Team is organizing in collaboration with the nurses, clinical staff, nursing leaders and informatics teams. The vision of our team is to continue to identify opportunities through our collaborative relationships and to close any gaps we have within our systems. ADVANCE was the first step in this process,” Kiepek said.
Technical support for ADVANCE was provided by Dario Giuse, Ph.D., associate director of the Informatics Center, and Yun Wang, Health Systems Software Engineer III.
“Thanks to everyone who contributed to this successful and very welcomed revamp of the user experience for our clinic nurses,” said Margaret Head, R.N., MSN, MBA, VMG chief operating officer and chief nursing officer.
Deborah Ariosto, Ph.D., R.N., director of patient care informatics and chief nursing information officer, said, “Any design that is meaningful across diverse clinics reflects an elegant synthesis of user input and programming efforts. ADVANCE efficiently organizes documentation views that thoughtfully follow the workflow. Excellent work by the I2 and StarPanel teams.”
For more information clinic staff can contact their clinical systems specialist.
