Going digital saves staff time, paper and improves staff wellbeing

PICTURED: Staff from the Occupational Therapy Learning Disability Service.

A Swansea Bay service has increased staff wellbeing, saved staff time and cut its use of paper by going digital with its clinical recordkeeping duties.

The Occupational Therapy (OT) Learning Disability Service, hosted by Swansea Bay but also working across Cwm Taf Morgannwg and Cardiff and Vale health boards, supports people who have a learning disability and a health need.

The team is now storing patients’ information on secure internal digital systems, following a year-long project which identified that the switch saved 1,092 hours of staff’s time each year – the equivalent of over £28,200 in wages – and boosted the wellbeing of its staff.

It has also prevented 5,200 print outs over the course of a year, making a small saving of £50 annually.

Rachel Thomas, Lead OT, and Sophie Reynolds, sustainability champion and OT Technician, have been leading the project.

Rachel said: “It is a long-standing practice within the service that OT staff typed their notes electronically and saved to a team shared file. Then they’d print out the copy and put it in a paper profession specific folder.

“We are always looking for ways to work in a leaner approach which ensures we provide the best service to our clients. Our findings highlighted that staff spent roughly an hour per week on printing and storing notes in paper files.

“We’ve cut that part of the process out, and our staff have stated they are happier doing this as it gives them more time to provide specialist OT input. It also saves staff time from travelling to a base to print out the notes, while it also has environmental benefits as we have drastically reduced our use of paper.

“Staff wellbeing is at the core of our service and we are delighted that staff reported high satisfaction with this new approach. It provides a more robust method of storing record keeping and storage of important information which reduces risk and increases quality of information sharing.”

The project’s positive outcomes have also been noted by other staff within the Learning Disabilities (LD) service.

Sophie Reynolds, sustainability champion and OT Technician, said: “We are very passionate about the role of the service in empowering clients, carers and staff in order to get the maximum benefit for the clients that we work with, and we are also passionate about our staff wellbeing and sustainable decisions we make.

“We are really proud of this development, and it is well embedded now in our service along with other therapies staff within LD such as physiotherapy, and we are hopeful it can roll out further.”