VAR IN CLINICAL PRACTICE
How can VAR Healthcare support you in everyday life?
VAR is one system for use across nursing practice and education, as a digital tool it has multiple applications.
There are three main areas where VAR Healthcare can provide support:
- Knowledge support
- Process support
- Decision support
KNOWLEDGE SUPPORT
The rationales in VAR form the foundation for the procedures and topics. The content is designed to be user-friendly, providing an overview and support for justifying the procedures' content and steps.
Updating the content in VAR is an ongoing process, with procedure changes driven by new knowledge being registered and graded. Since VAR is used across education and practice as well as across various clinical practice settings, we contribute to standardisation and enhancing cohesive patient care pathways and patient safety.
This is how VAR contributes to evidence-based practice.
PROCESS SUPPORT
The purpose of process support is to assist and coordinate a workflow, such as nurses'planning and documentation process, and to contribute to continuity and cohesive patient care pathways. VAR is integrable with all major EHR systems, both in municipal healthcare services and hospitals. The procedures in VAR Healthcare serve as an intervention (with actions organised systematically) and are accompanies by:
- Nursing diagnoses
- Goals/patient outcome
Both the procedures/interventions, nursing diagnosis and goals/expected outcomes are mapped to SNOED CT (ICNP).
The procedure describes related observations and patient information (actions/interventions), as well as advice on how to document using VAR. This highlights important elements and integrated interventions within a complex process.
VAR can be integrated with an organisation's quality management system (QMS), such as Compilo, EQS, and EK, providing leaders and managers with support in quality management.
Employees are better equipped to meet the requirements for both internal and external audits and nonconformity management, thereby saving both time and resources.
DECISION SUPPORT
VAR Healthcare can be defined as a clinical decision support system, a digital service that helps healthcare professionals to make accurate and well-informed decisions based on knowledge base tailored to the clinician.
Core elements of clinical decision support include standardised and structured data, along with a knowledge base that can be combined with this data.
Support to find relevant procedures for a given situation:
Users can conduct searches based on a specific issue, risk, or nursing diagnosis and quickly receive suggestions for relevant procedures in that context. This helps users remember and adhere to good practices in a busy work day.
Integration with EPR/EHR (Electronic Patient Record/Electronic Health Record):
Further and automated decision support can be achieved through deep integration with EPR/EHR systems. Metadata from VAR can be sent to the EPR/EHR system and to simplify and ensure the quality of planning and documentation. In Norway we collaborate with VISMA and their new "Flyt Helse (EHR) for such a solution. Read more about our integration and collaboration partners here.
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MODULE - MY SKILLS
VAR contributes to lifelong learning. The module My Skills is a digital learning resource designed to ensure key elements of professional development for healthcare personnel, both during their education and in clinical work.
The purpose of My Skills is to provide guidance, training and improving learning on executing the procedures. My Skills can be used both during education and in proactice for ongoing professional development to ensure evidence-based practice.
In the My Skills module, an operationalised and digitised version of the Model of Practice Skill Performance is linked to all procedures. It includes an assessment scale for each element, which is easy and intuituve to use.
STAVANGER UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL
Nursing practice is becoming more complex. Knowledge and new research are constantly evolving and the challenge is to introduce this into daily work. Patient safety is increased when nurses have easy access to vital knowledge. However, how does this new information reach a nurse in a hectic everyday work environment?