Anesthesiologist Staff Tracking Board

Overview

Anesthesiologists at Penn State Hershey Medical Center currently rely on a manual system involving a whiteboard to track and schedule their shifts. This can be a time-consuming and error-prone process, as updates to schedules and assignments must be made manually and communicated to all team members. By implementing a software solution, the hospital aims to improve efficiency and accuracy in the scheduling and delegation of anesthesiologists’ tasks. The new system will automate the process of scheduling and assignment updates and provide real-time access to up-to-date information for all team members.

Objectives

• Gain full understanding of the problem and previous framework done by reviewing the application and documentation provided by the Staff Tracking Board Team Fall 2022.
• Redesign the front end of the application around customer requirements to satisfy the project specifications voiced by the sponsor.
• Redesign a more efficient version of the database backing the application to reduce data redundancies and ensure accuracy and integrity of the information.

Approach

• Review existing solutions for real time scheduling of healthcare staff, understanding the tradeoffs and advantages applicable to our project.
• Meet with project sponsor to generate customer requirements and understand how to improve the application from last semester’s finalized work
• Analyze and translate the health care terminology used in our system to generate an interface prioritizing readability and ease of understanding.
• Merged the LunchApp database to the Staff Tracking Board database and refine the Staff Tracking Board back-end to ensure consistency of workflow
• Redesign the front-end of the Staff Tracking Board according to customer requirements, holding weekly meetings to discuss feedback of current design and functionality
• Preform testing on newly added features to validate intended functionality and feasibility

Outcomes

• The application will aim to reduce the burden of scheduling anesthesiologists by creating a standardized way to automate and organize the process of staff assignment
• By increasing the efficiency of staff assignment, the hospital can expect patient care to be improved by limiting the number of scheduling errors made
• Building the application for multi-user interaction will increase collaboration of the staff
• Ensure consistency of information flow between staff members utilizing the centralized touch screen monitor functionality