MyDay@QEHB: a personalised schedule of care events for inpatients University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust

Inpatients may be told their anticipated discharge date on admission, but no system exists that produces a schedule of planned interventions – for example, diagnostics, operative procedures and physiotherapy – for their stay.

This project by University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust aimed to bridge this gap between scheduling services and individual care plans by using a patient diary to coordinate activities and structure interventions around the patient’s day.

MyDay@QEHB is a daily schedule of routine and planned clinical interventions for a ward. It aimed to empower patients and manage resources effectively through diarising the inpatient journey. It works by mining referrals and booked appointments from a range of different clinical systems. These are then presented within a single personalised schedule as timed events alongside regular routine ward events.

Staff are able to select a ward within the module and then view and print a schedule for each patient. Schedules are given to patients each morning as part of the usual ward routine.

MyDay@QEHB has made the invisible visible. Baseline data demonstrated that only 54% of patients were told about the ward routine on admission. The intervention reduces patient anxiety and allows staff to better manage resources.

As part of the development of the intervention, appointment systems were introduced to the therapies and imaging departments, and the portering task allocation system was re-designed – these are now embedded and continue to evolve. Staff have reported improved communication between these departments and the wards.

Contact details

For further information about the project, please email Lorraine Simmonds, Head of Service Improvement (Project Lead) at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust.