1039 Improving Escalation Pathways and Appropriate Use of E-Whiteboard Out-of-Hours Task Generation in Trauma & Orthopaedics

Aim E-whiteboard is an electronic record system utilised across Sheffield Teaching Hospital NHS Trust. It is used to record and update patient information including observations. There is a task function which allows clinical personnel to write tasks relating to specific patients, however this should only be used outside of normal working hours. Previous inappropriate use has resulted in delays in care, especially for time critical jobs. We aimed to assess and improve the use of the E-whiteboard task system, an in-hours escalation by nursing staff. Method We retrospectively looked at e-whiteboard task data from 01/06/22- 31.07/22. The number of tasks, location of task generation and task content were reviewed, and tasks were further reviewed for content, urgency, and time to completion. Following several changes in the department, includingThe introduction of the Consultant of the Week (COW) model of careWard based Junior doctorsNursing staff educationA poster on the bleep and task escalation pathway. A subsequent reaudit from 03/03/23-10/05/23 was performed. Results There was a reduction in the number of inappropriate tasks generated and a decrease in the proportion of urgent tasks (from 84.6% to 29.4%) as well as tasks with patient safety implications (from 70.6% to 61.6%). Additionally, mean time to completion of tasks decreased from 5.24 to 3.61 hours Conclusions This improvement project has demonstrated some improvement in the use of E-whiteboard tasks, which may be due to several factors including staff education and consultant led decision making.