Su-Jung Chang, Head Nurse,  Dept. of Nursing

The obstetrics and gynecology ward was the first to introduce bedside electronic paper to replace traditional hardcopy bedside cards. Traditional hardcopy bedside card only provides basic patient information and manual tags are still required to provide personalized care reminders, such as preoperative fasting or limb precautions . The involved manual processes are not only cumbersome but also time-consuming. The new electronic paper device is not self-luminous and will not disturb patients’ sleep at night. The displayed information displayed includes: (1) basic information: bed number, name, medical record number, gender, age, blood type, and language as patient identification to assist administration and treatment accuracy by the medical staff. (2) Care team information:  names of attending physician and primary nurse are provided to allow the patient, companion or other medical staffs to immediately find the responsible physician and nurses. (3) Patient status display: universal symbols are used to display the patient’s status, such as discharge preparatory service enrollment, emergency evacuation grade, etc.,  to help nurses plan emergency evacuation routes to provide patient safety. (4) Mood thermometer and health education links: In conjunction with the hospital’s policy that suicide risk must be assessed during hospitalization, a mood thermometer barcode or any health education link is provided for patients during hospitalization to access the assessments of suicide risks or the related health educations using a mobile phone or tablet, following the institutional policy. (5) Daily care information: information of examinations, surgeries, and fasting precautions are displayed, such as schedules of any diagnostic examination, or therapeutic plan for the patient to provide personalized reminders and to decrease anxiety. (6) Personalized information editing:  the nurse can edit friendly reminders through the control system on the computer in the nurse’s working trolley and immediately transmit the messages to the electronic paper for the patient and to meet the personal needs . Our hospital’s bedside electronic paper integrates communication information on patient care between medical staff and patients and better achieve process simplification and information accuracy, saves time, improves care quality and creates a friendly environment than traditional bedside card information.

Figure 1. Bedside electronic paper integration of communication information