“Each person who uses the KareInn System sees a different angle of a person’s lived experience and that is why digital care planning is so important.“
— Jasmine Stanhope, Director of Specialist Services, Dementia & Resouces, Rushcliffe Care Group
Does this sound familiar?
Before we implemented our digital care planning system, all of our paper records were kept in lever arch files that contained lots of information about the medical, physical health, emotional, psychological needs, and biographical information.
Our filing system had personal data and information that we needed to effectively care for our end users. But, it wasn’t comfortable to carry around. A care plan review took two to three hours and involved pushing around a trolley full of files. Making information more portable, more accessible was one of the major reasons we decided to move to a digital care planning system.
“Thankfully since 2017, we’ve now been able to say, the care planning technology we use makes us much more person-centred.”
KareInn is helping us to provide a much more robust person-centred quality care provision for our service users. And it assists in the day-to-day management of our record-keeping systems for our management, our nursing staff and our care staff.
Meet Jasmine Stanhope
To give you some background, I’ve worked in the health and social care industry since I was 16, for the past 20+ years! I started out as a care assistant and worked my way through the organisation in different roles and various different services. I went off to do my nurses’ training and after that, ventured into the world of management within the care homes. More recently I’ve become a Director of Specialist Services, Dementia and Resources.
I’m incredibly passionate when it comes to making sure our services are the best that they can possibly be for our service users. This translates to having outstanding record-keeping and making sure our care plans are person-centred.
“For me, technology enables us to be 100% person-centred and that’s why we’ve chosen to go down the digital care planning pathway.”
Why KareInn?
Each person who uses the KareInn system sees a different angle of a person’s lived experience; from the carer who’s supporting a person with their day-to-day care needs, to the nurse who’s trying to formulate and evaluate the effectiveness of their care plan, to the manager who ensures the system and processes that are used within our organisation are safe and effective.
The care planning system’s multiple collaboration features allow us to incorporate the service users as the centre of everything that we do, but it also enables us to include their loved ones and relatives.
Using a mobile device (phone or tablet), the end user’s lived experience is captured. We’re able to see the impact of our interventions and measure the effectiveness of the quality of care provision for these individuals.
KareInn allows our care staff to access information securely and within a few taps. Care staff always know what a person’s needs and preferences are and all of our care is delivered as it should be, in a consistent manner, which makes things much safer.
For the management side of it, we’re able to analyse the trends and themes of the information that’s inputted. We can see the information is being recorded in a person-centred and dignified way. We can follow that up with staff and supervisions if need be. We can use it as ongoing training for staff with regards to dignity and respect, incorporating our company values. We can also look at our audit process to ensure really important data is being captured and used in the most appropriate way to make people’s lived outcomes better.
The really nice thing for carers is they’ve got all this information at their fingertips and it’s presented in a really accessible and engaging manner as well. So it’s not just words you’re reading, it’s presented in graphs and other pictorial methods so that people can be really engaged with the information that they’re reading and then delivering to our service users. It also helps make sure that service users feel engaged as well because the information that is presented to them is easy to understand and absorb.
Our old fashion ring binders had the same information that KareInn has now, but it took so much longer to capture and analyse it. Not only is it not portable, but the time-consuming nature of written records was astronomical for us and was one of the major factors that influenced us to move towards a digital system. The big win is we save time when it comes to analysing the information, reporting, recording, using it and storing it.
Digital care planning features we can’t live without
We feel that KareInn has created something that helps with every aspect of delivering and enabling better care within our services.
One of the features to mention is the care plan builder where we look at the clinical pre-admissions assessments and information that helps us create our person-centred care plans.
Other features mean that staff are able to complete really detailed notes throughout the day, even if they are struggling with writing the information. There is a dictation feature so they can speak information in and it will record it to the system.
We also have the ability to take and upload photos. For example, if they found a wound or a bruise, we can link that straight into the care plan in real-time. All the information we capture is the person’s actual lived experience including care interventions, as they go through their day. All this information is captured against the relevant aspects of the care plan system.
We’re able to set reminders for anything from routine day-to-day tasks to reviews of each of the risk assessments or care plan areas. You can assign tasks to different people within the system so everyone’s got that accountability and responsibility to feed into our record keeping, making it really rounded and robust.
Pertinent information can also be flagged for handover so the staff are able to recount from that person’s day adding real important information for the next shift to take over, without reading reams of information. It’s all kept very real, alive and relevant.
The system has clever workflows that enable us to trigger where areas might need further consideration. A re-assessment will get triggered, for example, if someone’s weight is reduced, and we’ll be prompted to re-look at the MUST score. If someone has a fall, the system looks at all aspects to make sure that the person’s follow-up care has been fully considered and actioned.
In my role, digital technology makes better care possible; looking at integrating information, triangulating it for evidence-based care plan reviews, analysing it to make sure all audit processes are really robust and providing the best possible outcomes for the people that we support.
If you would like to speak with Jasmine Stanhope or one of KareInn’s digital care planning experts, please email us at hello@KareInn.com
