Abstract

Before the triage tool was developed, nurses had to read through all patient notes on the virtual bed board at the start of each shift to decide which patients took priority. This process was time-consuming, especially for community teams who also factor in travel time and locality of available staff potentially delaying treatment. The team agreed that a more efficient method was needed to identify priority patients at the beginning of busy shifts.

Team members had existing acute Accident and Emergency (A&E) experience, including patient triage, which proved valuable for the hospital at home service utilising transferable skills. Similarly to A&E, patients at home often have urgent needs and require clinical triage to determine assessment order.

The H@H team conducted basic searches for a suitable community hospital at home tool but found none were available at the time. The trust library team were enlisted to help perform a thorough search using a PECO question and confirmed no appropriate tools existed in the UK or Europe. As a result, a practice gap was identified and a decision was made for our team to develop their own tool.

Quality Improvement Project_Prioritisation tool for management of a virtual bed board

Citations

Rebecca Bennett, Nicole Hobson, Alice Payne, Christina Newbould, Megan Smith, Leila Willis, Roy Osgood, Zoe Rooney, Kirsty Gee (2026), A quality improvement project for a triage/prioritisation tool for management of a virtual bed board within Children’s Hospital at Home

URI: https://oxfordhealth.nhs.uk/orka/title/a-quality-improvement-project-for-a-triage-prioritisation-tool-for-management-of-a-virtual-bed-board-within-childrens-hospital-at-home/