September is the month when a new school year begins and large numbers of children return to their studies after the long summer holidays. While there may be some reluctance to give up the relaxed routines and greater freedom that the holidays provide, there is also usually plenty of excitement about learning new things and embracing new experiences.
The same can be said for care home managers and staff switching over from paper-based records to digital care planning software. There will be an element of nervousness about moving away from a familiar method of working in favour of a brand-new system. However, this can be swiftly replaced by the thrill of learning new and more efficient ways of working that help you to spend more time with your residents and fewer hours wrangling with laborious handwritten records.
Care Vision offers a raft of essential apps and tools to help busy care home managers run their care setting and support their teams. In this ‘back to school;’ seasons, here are a few of the system’s highlights, divided into school subjects for easier study.
History
Care Vision stores key information for residents in an easy to use personal record function. This enables users to add details about their medical history, family relationships, birthplace and childhood, likes, dislikes, dietary needs and care plans. Thus building up an entire history of each person that enables joined-up care. As person-led care is big news right now, this is a great way to ensure that all plans and decisions are made with the individual’s unique mix of history, preferences and requirements for truly bespoke care and support.
Human biology
The ability to draw together a resident’s entire medical history, physical and mental health diagnoses and prescribed medication in one place offers huge benefits for carers working to ensure consistency across all medical and healthcare interventions. The eMAR system keeps close track of medications given, while other monitoring tools record side effects, changes in behaviours and emotions, falls prevention support and more. Other helpful healthcare tools include GP Connect that provides all necessary information to GPs as needed and Nurse Call that summons immediate assistance in a medical emergency.
Food technology
Care Vision also has several functions to help monitor care home residents’ food and drink intake, nutrition and hydration levels, plus any allergies or special requirements. All of this helps with meal planning, as well as keeping residents safe and well catered for during meal and snack times. Reactions to certain food types, religious considerations, allergies and dietary likes and dislikes can also be added to their personal records and medical updates on the system. Care Vision also has useful weight monitoring tools to spot any worrying trends related to food and calorific intake.
PSHE
PSHE stands for personal, social, health and economic education. A common subject in schools, this covers several key aspects of education that are not part of specific academic subjects. The system takes in a number of areas that would fall under a PHSE syllabus. These include the personal record and healthcare tools already mentioned, as well as event planning apps, payroll systems and features that record and monitor how residents’ personal money is allocated and spent. Finally, there are accounting and procurement tools that support the commercial side of finance, such as invoicing, payroll and budgeting.
Language and communication
Communicating with residents and their families is an integral part of running a care home. This helps keep everyone safe, informed and involved. An electronic visitors book enables everyone to know who is on site, the person or people they are seeing and the purpose of their visit. Resident notes are an effective way for carers to share updates, observations and concerns with other medical and care staff. Family members can also provide feedback about staff via Care Vision, which helps improve performance, reward best practice and help bring any concerns to light.
Business and computer studies
Finally, the world is turning increasingly digital when it comes to doing admin, running management systems, sharing information and keeping records. Care Vision offers a confidential, safe way to run a care home digitally, with encryption and passwords in place for secure access and IT-enabled technology built in to enable 24/7 remote access and easy sharing between authorised users. Add to that HR functions, accounting tools, rota and shift management features and training support, and Care Vision offers a comprehensive business suite for the staff and managers of care settings to use to their advantage.