The ‘preMETs on Medtasker’ project was launched 13 April 2021, moving preMET calls from the paging system to Medtasker and allowing direct communication between clinical staff i.e. nurse to doctor, in line with Standard 8.

Sandy Ayuob, Medtasker Project Officer, explains benefits of this change include lessening the workload for Switchboard, a faster and more reliable two-way communication, and the ability to record and review data, with time-stamped information. To monitor the progress of the project, the team conducted a pre-implementation and post-implementation survey.

“In the pre-implementation survey, we wanted to find out what staff thoughts were on moving preMets to MedTaskers, and of the 93 responses 66 per cent thought there would be risk moving from preMET to Medtasker. However, in the post-implementation survey there were 147 responses where 65 per cent experienced no issues. Overall, there were 60 per cent of staff who were satisfied with Medtasker, 30 per cent felt neutral to the change, and only 10 per cent were dissatisfied,” she explained.

On top of the data from the survey, the team looked at the data collected on the MedTasker app.

“The PreMET Working Group, led by Dr Lachlan Hayes, collected, and analysed ten weeks of data post Go-Live. There were 3,273 preMET tasks sent and 4,504 calls to Switchboard saved. Of the preMET tasks, 97 per cent were accepted within 30 minutes, the median response time was one minute and completion time was 26 minutes,” she explained.

Sandy and the team are quite happy with these results, and to improve the service, they also looked at the 10 per cent of the dissatisfied responders to find a common theme.

“Part of the feedback was the team didn’t find the staff member to send the preMET call to, as some clinical staff weren’t logged in. I would like to remind the clinicians that they need to log into their shift if they have a role that they need to display on Medtasker,” she said.

“The second issue was that in some cases, there weren’t enough computers to send the preMETs on, and the third was the slow response time. Some people weren’t pleased with the response time, but the median time shows the majority were answered on time,” she said.

Dr Sing TAN, an ICU consultant, ICU EMR Senior Medical Analyst and CHIA certified informatician, shared the digitisation of preMETs creates a level of visibility that is the first of its kind, and the data generated will undoubtedly provide insights that can lead to improvements in our management of deteriorating patients.

Elise Sutton, Clinical Deterioration Coordinator, shared her views from the Standard 8 perspective.

“With the assistance from Leanne from Decision Support, moving to Medtasker has given us the ability to pull data on preMET calls and have live updates on the Reporting Portal MET dashboard. The information available will allow Standard 8 to report on preMET data including the reason for activation, failed or delayed response, multiple preMET calls, correlation with MET calls, mortality, and allow for targeted education,” she said.

Finally, the team noted there was no increase in MET calls and Code Blues. The Medtasker team is now exploring a research project investigating the failed preMET calls which progressed as MET calls and has plans to implement Medtasker at Broadmeadows Hospital as well.