Digital tools in my work
I’m currently living in the Netherlands with my family because of my husband’s work assignment. I do not work here. I have a job at Turku University Hospital, where I am currently on study leave. It’s been almost two years now since the last time I have been working and it’s pretty wild how quickly you can forget things already in two years! But I’m trying to remember all the digital tools I used in my job.
The first thing that comes to my mind is, of course, the patient information system. The patient information system is a system where we record and find all the information we need to know about our patients. There we can find doctors’ texts and prescriptions, laboratory and scanning results, daily records and information that the patients have given us about themselves. In addition, we have a dedicated programme for various types of appointments. Most of our patients are in different inpatient departments, but some come only for an appointment as an outpatient. The work as a physiotherapist also involves lending various aids to patients. And for that, we also have a specific programme, Effector. In Effector, we record a precise product code and loan period for each patient. From time to time, the aids are also inventoried, for which Effector is also used. Another programme used specifically by physiotherapists is Physiotools, which is used to design and create exercise programmes for patients. The program has a bank of a huge number of different images of various movements. With Physiotools, we may draw up a training program that the patient needs. For patients with foreign languages, instead of a real interpreter, it is also possible to use Youpret, a remote interpretation service. With Youpret, we have remote access to interpreters in different languages, which we can use when meeting a patient. The digital tools we use to communicate between our colleagues include Skype, Outlook and, of course, work phones. The use of Teams is constantly increasing, with more and more information being stored and shared in Teams.
The tools of Social Media in my work
I found this section of the task a bit tricky, because I think that many of the tools on the list are not really useful in the hospital world and in patient work. In addition, the hospital and its various departments already have their own Instagram and Facebook pages. However, I chose the following five tools of social media to consider for this task: Blogger, DeepL, Evernote, Mobiilivarmenne and Open Badges. Blogger could be used to share peer support between patients. A blog could either be run by an individual patient who talks about and shares their experience of their illness or, for example, by a healthcare professional who shares reliable information about illnesses and their treatments. Peer support is important in all diseases and could be shared anonymously on Blogger. DeepL we could use to help to translate studies and articles in foreign languages. Evernote could be used in our work unit, alongside Teams, to compile articles and other material for everyone to use. Shortly before I moved out from Finland, smartphones started to become more common as work phones throughout the hospital. It would be interesting to see if Evernote could be used on them as well. We carry our work phones in our pockets all the time so we could reach Evernote whenever. I think Mobiilivarmenne would be a great way to help secure identification between patients and healthcare staff. At the moment, we can only send our patients emails, but I would maybe like to have a little more options for communication. Finally, I am thinking about using Open Badges in our work. For example, we have run aids badges where we demonstrate our competence in the use of different training or measuring tools. Here too, the Open Badges could perhaps serve as a clearer sign of our competence.
As with all tools of social media, particular care must be taken when using them with patients to protect patient privacy and data protection. I would see the tools of social media offering many opportunities for healthcare providers to share and communicate in many different ways, but the security issues are so important that we must be really careful with them.
Elements for successful use of a digital application
In my opinion, the successful use of a digital application consists of a few basic elements: ease of use, functionality and security. The user should be able to easily learn how to use the application without much time or help from another person. There are of course differences between users, but in general the use of an application should possible for any person. The application should also not require any special technical knowledge to use, it should be easy to understand without specific training. As a visual person myself, I like an application that is visually clear, pleasantly coloured and easy to grasp. The second feature I mentioned is functionality. There is nothing more annoying than an application that doesn’t work, crashes or is otherwise just slow. The application should also work on different devices and operating systems. In addition, updates to the application should work without problems, only improving the use of the app. Last, but not least, is the security of the application. User data should be handled securely and users should have a clear understanding of how their data will be used in the application. The focus on security should therefore be a top priority for the application developers.
Self-evaluation
In this task, I found it very interesting to explore all these different tools of social media. Although many of the tools were better suited to different types of team and project work, it was fun to explore them and think about how they could be used. It was also interesting to read other students’ experiences with different tools of social media and how they use them in their work. In particular, it was interesting to hear about the experiences of other healthcare sectors in using these tools. Many of them had similar experiences to mine. I think that the assignment taught me to evaluate the potential of different tools of social media in my own work, while also remembering the critical side. The assignment also broadened my understanding of the use of social media tools in my field.