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Epic Promoting its User Friendly Capabilities

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Epic Promoting its User Friendly Capabilities

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Reference:

Cool stuff now: Staffing & patient flow. (2024, May 21). Epic. https://www.epic.com/epic/post/staffing-patient-flow/

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Epic Cool Stuff Now - Staffing & Patient Flow

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Reference:

Q: Can we use the ehr to help balance nursing workloads? a: Yes. use the nursing assignment wizard. (2023, October 09). EpicShare. https://www.epicshare.org/tips-and-tricks/balance-nursing-workloads

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Q: Can we use the EHR to help balance nursing workloads? A: Yes. Use the Nursing Assignment Wizard.

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Support nurses by making data-driven patient assignments.

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What is This New Innovative Tool, the Assignment Wizard?

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What is This New Innovative Tool, the Assignment Wizard?

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For decades, one of the most dreaded tasks of being a Charge Nurse has been creating the assignments for the oncoming shifts. No one is ever happy with their assignments; everyone feels the need to complain or trade with their buddies. But what if you could use your charting software to practically do the job for you?  Introducing Epic’s new feature, the Assignment Wizard.

Charge Nurses will be able to easily create assignments in Epic’s Assignment Wizard, by utilizing the schedule that is pulled over from your scheduling software and the new Calculated Workload Score.

The most innovative feature of the Assignment Wizard, is the Calculated Workload Score.

The Calculated Workload Score is where Epic will scan through the individual patient's chart and score everything that has to do with the patient, such as diagnoses, orders, medications, how many people needed to assist in transfers, wound care, number of wounds and the list goes on. Essentially, the goal was to calculate the acuity of patients according to every aspect of their chart. Not just their diagnosis.

Assign Nurses to Patients with the Assignment Wizard [INP105 [Video]. (2023, February). EPIC UserWeb: weLearning.

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How could this new innovation not be so great?

1. Change- Nurses do not like change and they tend to push back when they are unsure if their jobs will become harder.

2. More questions- "What will happen to the processes we already have in place?" Will this replace the system that we have?" "If it is not broken, why fix it?"

3. Can everyone use the new wizard with ease? Not every nurse is "tech savvy".

4. The new tool does not allow for assigning patients to the patient care techs. Assignment Wizard only pulls the RNs over the system.

5. How accurate is the score? Will it truly take into account every aspect of the patient's chart to give a realistic acuity score?

6. Can it be trusted?

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The Instructional Video from Epic UserWeb.

Assign Nurses to Patients with the Assignment Wizard [INP105 [Video]. (2023, February). EPIC UserWeb: weLearning.

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Search for your organization from the list below. If you are not affiliated with an organization, choose UserWeb Account.

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So, how can this new innovative technology actually help my unit?

1. Using the calculated workload score, you can easily see which patients have the highest and lowest acuities on the unit at that time. This will help equally disperse heavy loads and make the assignments for equitable. This new tool takes the guess work out and gives the charge nurse quantitative data to back up their decisions.

2. Time saver- Gone are the days or making lists and assignments then erasing and making changes. This tool makes it easy to quickly make changes to the assignments with a just a simple click.

3. Time saver- This tool pulls the schedule directly into the Epic system to give you a visual of who will be the oncoming shift.

4. This will be a clear and precise way of making assignments and will take away the multiple ways of completing this task by different charge nurses and personalities.

Assign Nurses to Patients with the Assignment Wizard [INP105 [Video]. (2023, February). EPIC UserWeb: weLearning.

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This Authors Personal Opinion About the Matter:

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This Authors Personal Opinion About the Matter:

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When I first learned of this new capability, I was excited. I have always felt that technology is the future of nursing, and we just need to get on board. Technology is a big part of the future of nursing, and it is not going away.

I felt the Assignment Wizard truly was innovative because it is literally utilizing the data we have been collecting for years and actually making it tangibly useful in nursing care.

It has been a long-time challenge for charge nurses and leaders to make assignments on patients based off of reports, diagnosis, locations, and a quick chart check. Now with this new assignment wizard, this should take the guess work out of the picture and give us quantitative data to stand on. A challenge has always been how to help RNs understand the rationale behind the assignments that have been made for them. With this tool, it will be clear and concise. No need for opinions, just facts.

Another issue for nurses is time. There is never enough time to get everything done. This is also true for charge nurses, especially on my high acuity critical care unit. I believe this tool will help cut back on the time it takes to complete this task in order to give them more time with their nurses and assisting and teaching where needed.

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I would hope I could bring many different skills to the team but these are my top 5 strengths that I think would be useful to a team that is rolling out the new innovative tool, the Assignment Wizard.

Arranger is definitely a strength that I can bring to the table as I am very capable of seeing all of the many pieces to a project and easily put them together to help with productivity and functionality. I tend to see the big picture and make decisions based on how my decision will affect everyone not just the individuals.

I am also capable as a developer who can see the strengths and weaknesses in other as well as very capable in educating and teaching in order to developed and grow them in their weaknesses. There is so much pleasure in investing your time and efforts into someone and seeing growth.

I also feel that I bring strengths such as includer. I feel that I am very inclusive of all types of people and welcome them to bring all they are to the table. We all can contribute to a cause.

Something I feel can be a strength and at times a weakness, is my abilities as an empath. I am very sensitive to people and how they are feeling. It is easy for me to imagine myself in their shoes or understand the impossibility to even try to imagine some situations. I believe it can be a weakness when I want to "fix" their situations or bend my institutions rules or policies to make their situations better.

Lastly, I feel that I am absolutely a positive individual. I believe this does help with building relationships. I tend to always lean towards the best outcomes and set my goals and work towards them with great enthusiasm. I feel people on my team, tend to want to be around more positive people who want to problem solve and bring solutions to the table rather than focus on what cannot happen or be done to fix an issue.

All in all, I believe that as a leader I do bring strengths to the team that will help it be successful, but I am also capable and willing to work on my weaknesses as well.

Busch, P. S., & Davis, S. W. (2017). Inside out personal branding (iopb): Using gallup clifton strengthsfinder 2.0 and 360reach. Marketing Education Review, 28(3), 187–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/10528008.2017.1367930

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In order to put together a team that will be successful, it is good to try and find people that have different strengths.

The team for to develop and roll out this new innovation would be Abraham, Carter, Faith, Fernando, and Daisy.

A new technology that is being developed and rolled out needs someone like Faith who can look to the future and see how the world is growing and using the most up to date technology. The team would need Abraham who can see the big picture and help arrange all of the many pieces and parts to help make it successful. Daisy would be a major help to the team as a developer who can see the strengths in others and help them to learn and utilize the new tool. Carter will being a strong ability to communicate the purpose and need to the stockholders. They will be able to present clearly all of the aspects of the project and help in the roll out process as well. Fernando will the one to help keep the team focused on the end goal and make sure everyone is following through on their commitments. He will be disciplined and make sure deadlines are kept and respected.

This team with these team players have a very good chance of being successful with the task of developing and rolling out the Assignment Wizard.