Good Documentation Practice

About our Client

New Zealand Blood Service (NZBS) is commissioned to support the health care community through the collection, testing, processing and supply of blood, blood products and other controlled human substances. NZBS makes over 220,000 collections through its 9 blood donor centres and mobile units, which are then processed at the 4 processing sites across the country.

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Their Brief

NZBS has a licensing and accreditation requirement to create and store complete, accurate and legible records to maintain a clear audit trail. Some poor practice was identified during an audit, prompting the need to reinforce the principles and practices of good documentation.

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Our Role

Given that everyone has already attended a 2-3 hour quality session within their first month, we recommended a fun approach to good documentation practice as part of the wider GXP (Good X Practice) initiative. We recommended a two-part solution:
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A ~2minute narrated animated message

Reinforcing why NZBS must have good documentation, promoting the concept of “value the record” and introducing the principle of ALCOA+.
 

A 10minute GDocP Challenge

For them to show they know the correct thing to do, thus appealing to more experienced as well as newer staff.
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The Challenge adopted the first-person perspective, where they are presented with a series of visual record-related issues requiring them to take practical action (in line with SOPs). For example, they see a portion of a document where they’ve made a mistake and need to correct it, by dragging on their chosen correction method, selecting from: whiteout to cover and rewrite over it, a thick pen to redact and correct, a biro to strikethrough and alter, or a biro to strikethrough, amend and sign.

The Challenge is gamified through the use of contextual interactions, with natural consequences and feedback for their chosen action, blood drop “lives” or points which they lose for taking poor actions, and a final scoreboard showing how well they did. Upon successful completion (all blood drops retained), they are awarded a digital badge from the GXP series.

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Their Results

The GDocP solution has been effective at reinforcing correct documentation practice with greatly reduced errors identified during Audit, and giving NZBS confidence that it is meeting licensing and accreditation requirements.

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