HUNDREDS of iPods have been handed out in the latest bid to boost patient safety at Great Western Hospital.

The devices are being used by doctors and nurses to log patients’ observations, which in the past would have been written on paper charts stored at the end of the hospital beds.

Clinicians overseeing the project say the devices, onto which a purpose-built mobile app have been loaded, will help flag deteriorating patients earlier than before. The iPods will run the NHS’s National Early Warning Score system, which gives each patient a score depending on how sick they are.

Dr Charlotte Forsyth, a consultant and chief clinical information officer, said: “From a patient safety point of view the benefits are huge. We know that nurses are brilliant, but there’s sometimes an issue with spotting the sick patients.”

If they fear a patient is becoming sicker, scoring higher on the NEWS system, nurses are able to more easily escalate the case to doctors.

Dr Forsyth said: “There’s often a reluctance to escalate patients - both from junior doctors to senior doctors and nurse to doctor. This way it’s so much simpler. Once a nurse decides they want to escalate it, it’s just a message alert that will go to that doctor’s mobile device.”

If a doctor declines the alert, the app will automatically find another doctor.

Caroline Tandy, the senior nurse overseeing the project, said: “Before we had a paper chart that we did observations on. Then we had to manually score and escalate to the doctor. Nervecentre has taken that away and put it on an iPod.

“Under the old system, once you’d calculated the NEWS you’d either have to go and find a doctor or bleep a doctor. Inevitably you’d have to wait for the doctor to bleep back. Communication was difficult. Now it’s just automatic.”

The scheme has been a year in the planning. Unlike other IT projects in the NHS, Nervecentre has seen much greater involvement from the doctors and nurses who will actually have to use the technology. It means it is more likely to prove successful, Dr Forsyth says.

The doctor said: “On day one there was quite a lot of anxiety. From the nurses’ point of view we were changing the way they worked. They weren’t entirely sure they wanted it. Within half an hour, once they’d done their first set of observations, we had a transformed workforce. They are now really enthusiastic.”

Ms Tandy added: “If you tried to take it away from them they wouldn’t have it.”

It is expected all hospital wards will be using the new devices by September. The emergency department will be the last to move from the paper to electronic system.

Dr Forsyth and Ms Tandy said the NEWS reports could be printed off if patients needed to be moved to other hospitals.