Streamlining Care in Crisis: Rapid Creation and Implementation of a Digital Support Tool for COVID-19

Abstract

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in rapidly evolving best practices for transmission reduction, diagnosis, and treatment. A regular influx of new information has upended traditionally static hospital protocols, adding additional stress and potential for error to an already overextended system. To help equip frontline emergency clinicians with up-to-date protocols throughout the evolving COVID-19 crisis, our team set out to create a dynamic digital tool that centralized and standardized resources from a broad range of platforms across our hospital. Using a design thinking approach, we rapidly built, tested, and deployed a solution using simple, out-of-the-box web technology that enables clinicians to access the specific information they seek within moments. This platform has been rapidly adopted throughout the emergency department, with up to 70% of clinicians using the digital tool on any given shift and 78.6% of users reporting that they “agree” or “strongly agree” that the platform has affected their management of COVID-19 patients. The tool has also proven easily adaptable, with multiple protocols being updated nearly 20 times over two months without issue. This paper describes our development process, challenges, and results to enable other institutions to replicate this process to ensure consistent, high-quality care for patients as the COVID-19 pandemic continues its unpredictable course.

Team and leadership factors and their relationship to burnout in emergency medicine during COVID‐19: A 3‐wave cross‐sectional study

“…Process clarity, a scale validated in past psychological research, provides a measurement of the extent to which staff is clear about how to do their jobs and has been found to be an antecedent of team effectiveness 9,10 . We selected it because it may be particularly important for maintaining the emotional and physical resources that limit stress during crisis, when there is great uncertainty about what to do and typical ways of working together are disrupted 11,12 …”

Building Back Better: Applying Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic to Expand Critical Information Access

“…1. Empathize : In the early months of the pandemic, clinicians on our team quickly realized the powerful applicability of our COVID-19 platform 1 and received multiple requests to include non-COVID related guidelines. Based on these requests and informal interviews with fellow clinicians while working on shift, our team brainstormed how we could apply the lessons we learned from the development of our COVID-19 platform to a broader clinical information tool.…”

“…At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the volume of rapidly evolving clinical information necessitated innovation in Emergency Department (ED) information management. 1 , 2 , 3 Among these innovations was our hospital's COVID-19 decision support tool, zsfgCOVID, a digital COVID-19 information source with up-to-date guidelines related to testing, PPE and airway management. 1 Epidemics and other public health crises can expose weaknesses in the organization and delivery of clinical care.…”

“… 1 , 2 , 3 Among these innovations was our hospital's COVID-19 decision support tool, zsfgCOVID, a digital COVID-19 information source with up-to-date guidelines related to testing, PPE and airway management. 1 Epidemics and other public health crises can expose weaknesses in the organization and delivery of clinical care. 4 Although COVID-19 clinical guidelines have tended to change more rapidly than guidelines in other areas of clinical care, the challenges presented by COVID-19 information management are broadly applicable.…”

Unprecedented Training: Experience of Residents During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Some of the most effective interventions included the construction of platforms to disseminate rapidly changing clinical information, improved access to psychological counseling services, increased mentorship opportunities, and augmented meal support. [53][54][55][56] Many of these innovations may offer benefits beyond the pandemic and may further support trainees' physical and psychological health in the postpandemic era.…”