Access to Information
FULLY CONNECTED Surrey's Tina Baker used the professional responsibility process to secure new laptops that allow her mental health team to better care for patients in the field.
For over six years, registered psychiatric nurse Tina Baker has been responding to urgent calls for help alongside the RCMP. She is one of three Surrey Memorial Hospital RPNs that make up the Car 67 mobile crisis response team operating out of the Surrey RCMP detachment. The program is a partnership between the RCMP and Fraser Health Authority and specializes in teaming up uniformed officers with clinical nurses like Baker to provide on-site emotional and mental health assessments, crisis intervention and referrals to appropriate services like local mental health centres, addiction centres and counselling services.
For Baker, it's her dream job. The passionate nurse says she feels lucky to enjoy coming to work every day and making a difference in people's lives. "Even though you aren't sure what to expect day-to-day, this is rewarding work," she says.
It's important that nurses on the team have remote access to a patient's medical information. However, Baker says that by 2011 the old and unreliable technology she and her co-workers were using often meant there was little or no ability to pull up sensitive information regarding patients they were assisting, which meant they often had to rely on Surrey Memorial's emergency room in order to access files and health records.
"When I first started with Car 67 in 2000, we still had flip phones," laughs Baker. "We asked to upgrade to Blackberries and that was an easy solve – asking for new phones was good enough. However, it became obvious to us that the laptop we relied on when in the field wasn't adequate. We were constantly on the phone with the help desk. We work in crisis response and we depend on immediate access to people's health-care information to determine the history of the patient and what their needs look like."
"When the laptop came, I was even more excited to do my job because I had access to equipment that worked."
Baker remembers one particularly challenging day on the job that made her realize something really needed to change.
"We had responded to a woman who was up a 60-foot tree. She wouldn't come down, was high on drugs and had just been discharged from jail and had mental health issues," she recalls. "Her psychologist wanted to speak to me and get her details but I couldn't access anything on the laptop I had with me."
The incident prompted Baker and her co-workers to access the professional responsibility process (PRP) and in February 2017, they began the first step by initiating a conversation with their managers about the need for upgraded equipment and technology. They explained their critical need for a new laptop that would provide them access to important information around an individual's community support and mental health needs while in the field. They also explained why their existing laptop was making it hard for them to document every call they responded to.
The nurses then filled out a professional responsibility form and submitted the concerns to their workplace Professional Responsibility Committee, where it was well received.
"Filing a PRF put our needs down on paper and made it clear what we were asking for," says Baker. "Because we are so removed from Fraser Health sites and generally work in isolation, our needs were sometimes overlooked, to no fault of the managers. We would mention it, but everyone is so busy." Baker notes that, while her immediate managers are very supportive, the PR process puts the onus on the employer to make the change.
It took six months, but by August 2017, Baker and her Car 67 colleagues had exactly what they had asked for: a high functioning, reliable Panasonic Toughbook, that now provides them instant access to clients' files while in the field.
While Baker admits she had initial concerns about how her manager and supervisor would react to their decision to file a PRF, she says she quickly realized it was exactly what needed to happen to get the ball rolling in the right direction.
"In all my years as a nurse, I've never had to go to BCNU for help to get things resolved, and I saw it more as a negative," she admits. "I felt my supervisor and manager would be upset to hear that I went to the union, but their reaction was the complete opposite. They told me the PR process was helpful to get the ball rolling and everything was very well received when I did put the request in."
Baker's positive experience reflects the guiding principles of the PR process, which is designed to offer the chance for collaboration between nurses and employers at the local level. It allows all parties to identify problems without assigning blame while promoting opportunities for improvement and building trust.
Baker says she would recommend the PR process to anyone who's in need of workplace support or in her case, improvements that make it easier to provide safe patient care. Her experience shows that when nurses step forward and make their voices heard the process does work and can provide positive results.
"When the laptop came, I was even more excited to do my job because I had access to equipment that worked," says Baker. "We've had it for months now and it is 100 per cent reliable and allows us to access files on the move which makes our jobs easier – it also helps keep people out of the ER which is a big part of our role." •
UPDATE (March - April 2018)