One-stop service for inpatient caregiver registration during COVID-19 pandemic

Yu-Wen Su

*Nurse , MDS, Department of Infection Control, National Taiwan University Hospital Yunlin Branch, Yulin county, Taiwan

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges to the world since the end of 2019. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has placed a huge burden on healthcare workers. In addition to effective therapeutic drugs and vaccines, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) are particularly important to stop the spread of the virus.

Wearing a mask and implementing hand hygiene are important and effective infection control measures. Digital contact tracing is an important global epidemic technology when the urgency of epidemic monitoring and epidemic prevention. Therefore, patient-centered contact registration becomes important information for follow-up investigation.

The research purpose is to understanding the registration process of inpatient caregiver information in order to solve the problem of queuing congestion at the hospital entrance.

METHOD

Use digital intervention designs the research. Change the registration process of the inpatient caregiver’s information from paper to digital record. The registration place was changed from the hospital entrance to the nursing station. Set Automatic temperature measuring machine plus induction alcohol hand sanitizer machine at each nursing station. And before register, visitor would used alcohol hand hygiene and measure the temperature every time. At the same time Health workers use visitor’s health insurance card to link to the National Health Insurance Administration's health insurance medical information cloud query system TOCC window to provide COVID-19 related information. And patient visitors’ information about Travel, Occupation, Contact and Cluster history (TOCC) can inquire immediately.

Questionnaire of inpatient caregiver registration system are established to satisfaction survey including type, timing, location and overall satisfaction. The 5-point Likert scale was used and the consists of the below points (1) Strongly Disagree; (2) Disagree; (3) Neither Agree nor Disagree; (4) Agree; (5). Strongly Agree. There are 52 samples before intervention from November 30 to December 3, 2011 and 42 samples after intervention from December 8 to December 13, 2011.

Result

Basic data analysis, inpatient caregiver average age 50.9, Gender percentage was male 38.5% and female 61.5% before intervention. After intervention, inpatient caregiver average age 50, Gender percentage was male 31.0% and female 69.0%. Caregiver registration process spends average savings of 4.5 minutes every time after improved TOCC registration. Caregiver’s satisfaction before and after process change average from 4.18 improved to 4.69. The TOCC completion rate of inpatients caregiver is increased to 100% at afternoon and night shift.

Conclusion

Caregiver registration process can register for 24 hours without time limit. Medical materials cost save $17,305 per month on infrared ear thermometer probe cover consumption. The place of registration was changed to the nursing station, which could reduce the distance of caregivers from ward to the hospital’s entrance, time consuming and reduce staff registration of TOCC. The visit registration system act in concert with alcohol hand sanitizer machine at each nursing station, could reduce the number of bacteria on hands of caregivers, could also fit Hand Hygiene Policy.

Reference

Huang, W. T., & Chen, Y. Y.(2020). The war against the corona virus disease (COVID-2019): Keys to successfully defending Taiwan. The Journal of Nursing, 67(3), 75–83. https://doi.org/10.6224/JN.202006_67(3).10

Lee, C.-L., Liao, Y.-M., & Chen, L.-C.(2020), The utilization of tracer management methodology to construct an information technology (IT) prevention mechanism of COVID-19 infection in admitted patients. Hospital, 53(4), 58-70.

Hung, I-C., Pan, S.-C.(2021). The COVID-19 challenge for health care workers: how to face the pandemic. National Taiwan university hospital journal of nursing,17(2),  5 – 14. https://doi.org/10.6740/NTUHJN.202107_17(2).0002