Carer sheets and paperless working
The Butterfly Scheme has always been a pioneer in dementia care and can therefore not be regarded as being likely to resist progress. The Scheme understands the general move towards paperless working in healthcare, but is alarmed to note that in some Trusts there is now consideration of including carer sheets within that paperless system.
It is easy to see the potential administrative advantages for a hospital in either having an online version of the carer sheet, or of scanning paper versions into electronic records. For those with that access, updating an electronic sheet would be easy.
However, the carer sheet within true partnership working – and certainly within the Butterfly Scheme – is a live document, accessible to all who care for the patient. This means that the patient, carer and entire healthcare team can all read information from the carer sheet and add information into the carer sheet at any stage throughout the care period. The Butterfly Scheme can currently see no possibility of this being achievable if the sheet was paperless.
This issue formed the key discussion topic at this month’s Butterfly Scheme’s Northern Ireland Collaborative Meeting. All Butterfly Scheme teams attending were in agreement on this subject, but they contributed to a discussion document now available to all Butterfly Scheme Leads who might find themselves taking part in similar conversations within their own healthcare team.
It took a long time for actively-used carer sheets and partnership working to become established; let’s not risk taking a backward step after so much progress has been achieved.