Nursing background ups Tina’s technology game

By Louise Kinross

Tina Smiley has a one of a kind role at Holland Bloorview, bringing her expertise as a nurse to the style of technological know-how that residences info critical to patient care. Tina is accountable for the pharmacy, laboratory and top quality and possibility administration programs of Meditech Expanse, our electronic health and fitness facts process. This is exactly where clinicians order patient remedies purchase and critique lab tests and benefits and report security incidents. Tina joined Holland Bloorview in 2005 as an inpatient registered nurse, performing most just lately with children in rehab subsequent unpleasant bone surgeries and everyday living-transforming spinal-cord accidents. She moved to her data administration and know-how purpose in 2012. 

BLOOM: How did you get into this area?

Tina Smiley: I have a passion for nursing and information and facts technology. In my early several years as a registered nurse, technology was turning out to be the future huge factor in well being care, and it blended wonderfully with my passion for nursing.

BLOOM: How did you get into nursing in the very first place?

Tina Smiley: I was a affected person myself. When I was about 10 years previous I was pretty ill and hospitalized at Centenary Medical center. This was my first major come across with getting ill. The nurses had been very compassionate and wore their hearts on their sleeves. I wanted to be ready to do what they did, and which is how I ended up turning out to be a pediatric nurse.

In my teenager years I knew what I wanted to do when I grew up. I took all the superior school programs I necessary to be in the proper stream for a well being job. I then been given a bachelor of Science in nursing at Toronto Metropolitan University, the place I did my undergrad. A handful of several years later on, I accomplished a learn of Science in nursing from the University of Phoenix while performing as a full-time nurse right here. 

BLOOM: What is a normal day like now?

Tina Smiley: In a nutshell, the aim is to support workers and manage the devices we have in spot. I’m aspect of the scientific half of the Meditech team. I am in cost of handling and maintaining the pharmacy, laboratory and top quality and possibility administration applications and their dictionaries. I also do the job on new builds, revise existing builds, and deliver support-desk support to the corporation. 

BLOOM: What are dictionaries?

Tina Smiley: Meditech is sort of like the in general program program and the dictionaries are where by we property facts linked to our pharmacy, lab and quality and threat administration purposes. Each software has its very own set of dictionaries. It can be exactly where we enter the information to develop the screens the team see when they obtain the charts and do their documentation.

During the workday, I may well be troubleshooting issues. I may be functioning on a new make, or revising an current a person. Some of these adjustments can be time consuming, depending on how elaborate they are. For instance, a good deal of tests may perhaps be concerned. It could call for conversing to staff to get their feed-back or to make clear their do the job flows. There are nuances to someone’s operate flow, so I pull in frontline employees to get suggestions in authentic time. I also do the job on our support desk and do on-get in touch with aid during enterprise and just after hours.

BLOOM: What is actually the biggest challenge of your occupation?

Tina Smiley: You can find a whole lot of balancing of competing priorities in the day, so time management is very important. But I wouldn’t say that it is hard. I never see matters as a problem, I see them as possibilities to find remedies, to understand something new, and to expand as a professional. Yes, there is anxiety concerned in any role, but which is typical in daily life and you find out to perform with that and get by way of it.

BLOOM: What’s the best pleasure?

Tina Smiley: Becoming ready to assistance many others. It is really the exact in general sensation that I experienced when doing the job straight with sufferers and households as a registered nurse. What I do now with know-how also touches on their life.

BLOOM: Can you give us an instance of how your operate impacts individual treatment?

Tina Smiley: All through the many years quite a few assignments have trickled down to the frontline the place they affect medical observe, the care offered and patient basic safety. 

For example, when we went are living with Meditech Expanse we did not have a lab interface in two directions in between Holland Bloorview and Sunnybrook. So we have been working on a hybrid product in which orders went into Meditech electronically, but the effects came back from Sunnybrook on paper. That affected several departments in phrases of included workload, and we weren’t capable to development knowledge. 

Given that then we have carried out a operating, two-way interface and eliminated the paper processes. Success arrive back again into Meditech and file electronically in the patient’s data. Workers can now craze the data and numerous folks can accessibility it at the exact time. That built a positive effect on good quality of treatment, increased tolerance safety, and mitigated the dangers of paper processes.

In one more illustration, I not long ago finished the to start with period of a position-of-treatment task. Our new glucometers check your blood sugar routinely and file the success electronically in the chart. So nurses no for a longer time have to to manually type the benefits. Every time you have to form information and facts, there is the prospect for error. We have taken out that protection risk.  

The second stage of the task is to employ a second diagnostic device in collaboration with Sunnybrook. Rather of sending lab specimens to Sunnybrook for a patient’s electrolytes and blood gases, we can use a handheld unit to take a look at at the bedside, virtually immediately, which saves time. Staff can then make an informed scientific determination primarily based on the results in the palm of their hands.

Our goal is to give team the instruments to make their jobs safer and additional productive. We attempt our most effective to automate as considerably as we can, while preserving client protection as the key priority.

BLOOM: What attributes do you have to have to be very good at your work?

Tina Smiley: You definitely will need to have fantastic consumer company techniques. Certainly, I’m functioning with know-how and at the rear of my computer system typically, but I am however supporting people today by consultations, initiatives and with the aid desk.

You happen to be also like a project manager. So you require exceptional conversation, organizational and alter administration skills.

BLOOM: It appears like your experience as a nurse is necessary.

Tina Smiley: Yes it is. What I convey is a lived practical experience as a frontline nurse consumer of our engineering devices. In my job as a clinical application specialist, I’m equipped to be a accurate topic make a difference expert since of my foundation in nursing.  I can have an understanding of what the consumer is likely through, even when their clarification just isn’t the clearest. I have an appreciation of how the methods do the job and how matters are linked. I am in a position to troubleshoot with simplicity because I have knowledge utilizing the programs on equally finishes.

BLOOM: Can you give yet another example of how your get the job done improves patient treatment?

Tina Smiley: Quality improvements occur from the details we accumulate in our incident reporting procedure. In the earlier we regarded that security issues were being underreported because it was far too sophisticated to navigate the screens.

When I redesigned the incident management screen, I didn’t sit in a place with a couple men and women and say ‘We want to do it this way.’ A collaborative technique was taken. We sought suggestions from frontline staff members on how to make the screens much more easy and consumer helpful.

We hardly ever want the engineering to get in the way of persons reporting matters. We worth suggestions and recommendations from stop-buyers. Such as frontline team in the style method permits us to detect trends. Alongside one another we can master where we can make a transform in procedures and strategies.

BLOOM: If you could alter one factor about children’s rehab from a know-how point of view, what would it be?

Tina Smiley: From the outpatient facet, I know a pet peeve is when households get there for an appointment and the look at-in system involves numerous ways to alert team. On my would like listing is the chance of an app we could give to families, or maybe a self check-in kiosk, so the family can notify the appropriate parties of their arrival. That would remove a good deal of the manual ways we currently acquire.

BLOOM: So it would be finished electronically as opposed to the mum or dad telling a team person they’re here, and then that individual paging a person, and often there’s a breakdown in communication.

Tina Smiley: Of course, that would be a large get for our appointments employees and clinicians. 

BLOOM: How does Holland Bloorview stack up in terms of its use of technological innovation?

Tina Smiley: We are leaders in the use of technological know-how to increase care. Our clinical data follows the affected person regardless of whether they’re an inpatient, working day individual, or outpatient. At Holland Bloorview, continuity of care is seamless, no issue which section or company you are observed in.

Conversely, I’ve worked in sites the place the chart does not follow the client. For instance, in an Crisis section a chart is made. But when you might be admitted, the device has to make a new chart, manually copying details from the Unexpected emergency department. This introduces a risk of transcription faults because the two charts do not discuss to each other. They are not integrated.

BLOOM: Is there anything at all we haven’t spoken about that would be practical for our audience to know?

Tina Smiley: I want people to know that though I do the job with technological innovation I am still very significantly a nurse. I maintain recent in conditions of anything at all observe relevant, and I maintain my qualifications up to day.

The pandemic proved to the planet that there is worth in having nurses on any crew, operating in all industries. The perception of a nurse is no extended limited to providing direct care at a bedside.

10 a long time ago I took a stage exterior my convenience zone professionally. As a result, I am in a position to see matters and problem things with a exceptional point of view. I can look ahead and believe about potential problems or hazards as a selection is becoming produced. My successes today are a consequence of my lived encounters gaining know-how and medical skills as a nurse. Nursing practice need to guide and tell know-how, not the other way about.

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