Empower to connect and connect to empower: experience in using a humanistic approach to improve patients’ access to, and experience of, care in isolation wards during the COVID-19 outbreak in Singapore

BMJ Open Quality

article

Natalie Liling Woong¹  Victoria Sze Min Ekstrom²  Xiaohui Xin⁴  Crystal Lim²  Evelyn Swee Kim Boon⁶  Shaun Wei Jie Teo⁷  Patrick Chee Sang Ng⁷  Tricia Pei Shin Ang⁸  Shu Hui Lim⁹  Amanda Yun Rui Lam²  Esther Monica Peijin Fan⁹  Shin Yuh Ang⁹  Wan Cheng Chow² 

[1] Internal Medicine , Singapore General Hospital;Medicine Academic Clinical Programme , Duke-NUS Medical School;Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology , Singapore General Hospital;Health Services Research Unit , Singapore General Hospital;Medical Social Services , Singapore General Hospital;Psychology , Singapore General Hospital;Integrated Health Information Systems, SingHealth Chief Informatics Officer Office , SingHealth;Communications , Singapore General Hospital;Nursing , Singapore General Hospital;Endocrinology , Singapore General Hospital

关键词: access to information;    healthcare quality improvement;    mobile applications;    COVID-19;    communication;   

DOI  :  10.1136/bmjoq-2020-000996

学科分类：药学

来源: BMJ Publishing Group

【 摘 要 】

Patients admitted to the isolation ward during the COVID-19 outbreak face multiple psychosocial stressors including the disruptive experience of being in quarantine, anxiety over contracting a newly emerging infectious disease and limited access to their healthcare team. This quality improvement project aims to leverage on technology to improve patients’ access to, and experience of, care while in isolation.Patients admitted to two isolation wards in Singapore General Hospital (SGH) between 28 February and 19 March 2020 were each provided an iPad loaded with the MyCare application (app), curated materials and mobile games. During this period, 83 of them accessed the device and the app. MyCare app is an app developed by the nursing team in SGH as part of an existing interprofessional collaboration to help patients navigate their care during their inpatient stay. In response to COVID-19, MyCare app was supplemented with materials to address affected patients’ informational and psychosocial needs. These materials included an information sheet on COVID-19, interviews with previous severe acute respiratory syndrome survivors, psychosocial support materials, and uplifting literature, illustrated storybooks and artwork.This paper describes the process of planning for, and executing, the intervention and reports the initial results of its effect. Initial feedback indicated a positive response to the intervention. 9 out of 10 respondents (90%) rated their hospital experience with a maximum of five stars and all 10 respondents (100%) rated the psychosocial support materials with five stars. Doctors managing the patients also observed a reduction in the number of commonly asked questions following the deployment of the iPad.This quality improvement project is ongoing with plans for further research to determine how to better support the psychosocial needs of patients in isolation during a novel disease outbreak. This report is written based on the Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence guidelines.access to informationhealthcare quality improvementmobile applicationsCOVID-19communicationhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

【 授权许可】

CC BY-NC|CC BY|CC BY-NC-ND