With clinicians working in inpatient areas across Monash Health using Baret for clinical communication from Wednesday 15 November, here’s how the tool is already working at our sites.
Baret on our wards
On a Monday afternoon, Sara Barnes saw a patient who presented for yearly review and mentioned that they had attended another healthcare facility three weeks earlier with concerning symptoms.
“I rang the ultrasound person located in Baret, who answered and listened to the story. They said to send them around to ultrasound immediately, which confirmed the situation did not require a visit to Emergency.
By the quick service and communication, we avoided unnecessary pressure on our ED, and our patient got to go home straight away.”
Speaking of this case and the potential for Baret to ensure excellent and timely care, Associate Professor Ronnie Ptasznik, Program Director for Monash Health Imaging said, “Baret has made a massive difference. My registrars voted last week to try to use Baret to provide a virtual consultative service as asked by Clinical Council from next April. I thought it was going to take two years to set up!”
Baret in action at the Victorian Heart Hospital
We had a chat with Jackson Wood, Senior Critical Care Physiotherapist at the Victorian Heart Hospital (VHH). Jackson has worked at the VHH since its opening. He works in critical care, predominantly in ICU, and has worked across all the Monash Health acute sites.
Before the introduction of Baret, he had used a variety of existing options to communicate with his colleagues and other medical areas.
Using a solution like Baret made sense considering the challenges presented by contacting employees via pager, “Communicating with medical employees was challenging at times, as contact details often changed and it was not possible to know whether or not a certain pager was even being carried at that time on that day.”
Making the change to Baret
Jackson and his colleagues at the VHH have found using Baret a relatively simple experience, “Baret is user-friendly, and it did not take much time for allied health to familiarise themselves. It was extremely helpful to know if someone was signed-in to a role (and whom), and improved accountability between all professions in receiving and responding to clinical communication.”
Jackson enjoys using Baret for the exact reason we introduced it; to allow clinicians to spend less time thinking about how to contact someone, and more time thinking about providing the best possible care.
“Baret helps minimise cognitive load, as there’s no need to search for a pager or find out, for instance, which registrar is on today – you just search for the role you need to contact, and away you go. Equally, it optimises visibility of incoming communication to our physiotherapy team, making it easier to triage, delegate and action clinical tasks,” said Jackson.
How to get the best from Baret
As a frequent user of Baret, there’s one thing Jackson would like everyone to understand about the platform, “Make sure everyone is clocked onto their role during clinical hours – the main (and intentional) limitation of Baret is that if no-one is clocked on, then that role cannot be contacted and this prevents the multidisciplinary team from communicating and escalating appropriately.”
What can I do now to be ready for Baret?:
- Complete the 15-minute Baret training on Latte.
- Visit the Baret Knowledge Hub for support resources and FAQs – search ‘Baret’ in the intranet page search bar, or via the Digital Health Training and Adoption (DHTA) icon on the desktop.
- Drop into a Baret webinar – details available on the Baret Knowledge Hub.
- Ensure you have opened MS Teams using your Monash login details, and registered for Baret before Wednesday 15 November.
For more information contact the Baret team at baret@monashhealth.org or head to Latte (search ‘Baret’ for Baret training) or the Baret Knowledge Hub for more resources.
Approved by A/Prof Michael Franco – Interim Executive Director, Digital Health