Medtasker has been implemented across key areas of Northern Hospital Epping and Broadmeadows since mid-2018 – and is proving to be an effective clinical communication tool for staff.

Medtasker was first piloted in our organisation in the pharmacy department in April 2017.

This lead to the ‘Medtasker at Night’ project, which launched 21 February this year at Northern Hospital Epping and Broadmeadows Hospital.

The staff during night shifts (20:00 – 08:00) including nurses, doctors, access/hospital coordinators and Northern Hospital Epping switchboard operators used Medtasker for clinical communication regarding routine tasks i.e. not pre-MET or MET calls.

The emergency department, ICU and psychiatric wards were not included and continued to use pagers.

The move to 24/7 operation commenced on 23 May 2018 at Broadmeadows Hospital, followed by Northern Hospital Epping on 21 June, with the same parameters and exclusions as Medtasker at Night.

Dr Kristen Pearson and Dr Lachlan Hayes recently attended the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Conference, where they presented a poster on ‘Communicating Safely in Hospitals with Medtasker’.

Their poster highlights the reason why Northern Health chose Medtasker, and the benefits the task management application has already provided to our organisation since the recent launch. Their presentation was well received.

Sandy Ayoub, Medtasker Project Officer, said feedback has been great.

“It has helped ‘task recipients’ such as doctors and pharmacists prioritise their tasks more efficiently as well as allowed clinicians to share tasks amongst each other to balance workload.”

Medtasker provides superior traceability and transparency of tasks when compared to the paging system, hence, helping ‘task senders’ such as nurses track the progress of their sent tasks.

“Medtasker is sparking the interest of other organisations looking to improve their clinical communications,” Sandy said.

Currently, there are 20 other organisations in conversation with Nimblic, the company powering Medtasker.