Supportive Care E-Form

A recently completed project at the Wimmera Cancer Centre is saving considerable nurse time to deliver quality supportive care for cancer patients.

Donna Bridge, GICS Cancer Service Improvement Facilitator has been working closely with the Grampians Health Horsham cancer nursing and Clinical Information Application Support teams to digitise the Modified Adelaide Supportive Care screening tool in the electronic medical record (EMR).

The patient’s screening information can be entered directly via tablet by nurses during the screening consultation. This then allows the data to be uploaded via dynamic data into a Supportive Care Multidisciplinary Report – without double handling the information.

The report is then ready for the fortnightly Supportive Care Multidisciplinary Team meeting with members spread across all hospitals in the Wimmera. The team can access the report in the EMR (OPAL/Bossnet) for the relevant patients to be discussed.

Previously these processes were conducted manually and now saves nurses 50 minutes per patient. This equates to 3.35 weeks of time saved over a 12 month period.

This work was also showcased by Carmel O’Kane (Manager Wimmera Cancer Centre) as a podium presentation at the Cancer Nurses Society of Australia (CNSA) annual conference at the Gold Coast in June 2024.