VAR IN CLINICAL PRACTICE
How can VAR Healthcare support you in your 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
Knowledge summaries in VAR form the basis for the procedures and procedure groups. The content is user-friendly, providing an overview with support to justify the content and steps of the procedures.
The updating of the content in VAR is a continuous process and the procedural changes that are based on new knowledge are logged and graded. Since VAR is used across education and various areas of practice, we contribute to standardisation, strengthening of holistic patient pathways and patient safety.
In this way, VAR contributes to evidence-based practice.
PROCESS SUPPORT
The purpose of process support is to coordinate and re-enforce a work process, such as the nurses' planning and documentation process. This can then contribute to continuity of care and holistic patient pathways. VAR can integrate with all the major EPR/EHR systems used in Norway, both in the community/municipal health service and in the hospitals. The procedures in VAR Healthcare are an intervention (with actions put into a system) and these have the following:
- Nursing diagnoses
- Goals/patient outcome
The procedure/intervention, nursing diagnoses and measure/expected outcome are all mapped to SNOMED CT (ICNP).
The procedure itself also describes associated observations and information (actions/intervention), as well as advice on how to document when using VAR. This highlights important elements and integrated interventions in a complex work process.
VAR can also be integrated with the company's quality management system (QMS), such as Compilo, EQS and EK, and provide the manager with support in quality management.
Employees are better equipped to meet the requirements for both internal and external control and nonconformity management. This saves 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 vital, high-quality decisions, which is based on a foundation of knowledge that is adapted to the clinician. Core elements of clinical decision support are standardised and structured data, as well as a knowledge base that can then be combined with this data.
Help to find relevant procedures in any given situation:
The user can carry out searches based on a concern, risk or nursing diagnosis and quickly get suggestions for relevant procedures for such a situation. This helps the user to remember and be reminded of good practice during a busy workday.
Integration with EPR/EHR (Electronic Patient Record/Electronic Health
Record): Additional and automated decision support can be obtained by deep integrations with EPR/EHR systems. Metadata from VAR can be sent to the EPR/EHR system and thus helps to simplify and quality assure planning and documentation. In Norway we have a collaboration with VISMA and their new Flyt Helse (EPR) on 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 that can be used to ensure important elements in the competence development of health personnel both during education and when they work in clinical service.
The purpose of My Skills is guidance, training and improving learning in the practice of procedures with associated knowledge material. My Skills can be used both during a study situation and in practice for further competence development to ensure evidence-based practice.
In the My Skills module, an operationalised and digitised version of the Research In Nursing Skills RINS model is linked to all procedures. It consists of rating scales for each of the elements, which is easy and intuitive 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 important knowledge. But how does this new information reach a nurse in a hectic everyday work environment?