Why is the Review necessary

Coralie Rogers: Challenges are around accessibility and wifi, making sure you've got the right hardware to access the clinical systems and the connectivity. In my world, there's a lot of out in the community as well. Where it's really important to access that data instantly, You know, you don't want to be having to go back and find records - you actually need all that stuff instantly at your fingertips. When you go to, say, a woman or a baby and their family in the house training on the system and lots of support. I think for us it's been about investing the support in the after the initial training and being there to follow up. So they understand the changes in the system. They feel confident and embedding that confidence in people. That students are brought up with it. So they have it from being a student nurse and student midwife. So when they come into the clinical world as a qualified member of staff, they feel really comfortable. And it's not something else that they've got to learn to add to the stress of a busy shift.

Sam Neville: I think it's start training around digital data earlier in the nurse training, definitely. I didn't do any of it, so many years ago... and so it was all new to me when I qualified, that would be good. I've had student nurses come to us and go, ‘we’re on a drug chart?’ They’ve never ever used system like EPMA. So there's that understanding.

Also the infrastructure of services. WiFi is the biggest niggle we have at the moment. So we're in procurement for a service WiFi refresh because if the infrastructure doesn't work, the systems that we put in aren't going to work and it's going to create more time and effort to nurses and you end up duplicating things.

So I think training in that at the beginning would be good.

Jane Bradley: So I think we need to work on improving the digital skills of the workforce. I think the sort of the younger new people coming up are probably a bit more digitally skilled than some of the older nurses or staff would be now. But actually I worked with people who are quite newly qualified to be quite scared of digital as well. So I think it's about actually getting the training that works for them. So it should. Group training is great. But actually, it's making sure that training is appropriate. So initially, I think we've, historically we've given the digital skills training, but it's been how to do a Word document, how to do an Excel sheet. Well, actually, when we rolled out our digital system we realised that actually just the basics of using a mobile device, how to connect onto the internet, how to get onto the system, how to find the icon and the basics and the like.

You know what?

We don't always need to use an Excel spreadsheet. So target your improving your digital skills to what you’re rolling out.

I would like everything to be digital. I know that is like the future is isn’t it. I would like it that we what we do is easy and it's simple but actually works for the people using it and benefits the patients.

So I read somewhere quite recently that if you have to train for longer than 10 to 15 minutes on the system, it's not the right system and it’s too complicated.

So the biggest change for me would be get users involved as in the system, let them help you test it, and they then embrace that change and it works for them.

Johanna Kelly: The biggest challenges are accessibility and not having inclusion at our forefront in our minds.

I think we are excluding members of our workforce through providing all this amazing technology without actually upskilling them properly, giving them the support that they need. And I've had recently I've had a discussion with someone that actually said that midwife left after 30 years of being in the NHS because they were an expert in that field, they got to the top of where they needed to be. They felt so confident and competent in their own abilities. And then introducing the new technology made them feel  that suddenly they were at the bottom, at the bottom of their game and they didn't want to be in that position where they weren't the most competent and they had to go to their juniors for help and support. So they felt that they'd rather leave the NHS than take on this new challenge. And I think that's our failings as digital leaders, not supporting them properly and providing them a safe space and empowering them to say help me, or empowering with the tools to be able to help themselves to further develop in this, make it actually a safe place to go to and do that.

David Turner: So I think first of all, the barrier for me is the technology they're working with today is very much old legacy technology, it doesn't really kind of follow them on their journey of the job they're doing today. So it creates a big barrier for them and the burden of time having to use legacy systems that don't meet their needs today. So I think that's the first barrier is looking at technology that actually keeps up with the demand of speed, which the nurses today and I'm working with them to build the best possible technology pathways supporting their needs.  So I think digital for me, everybody should be digital, not just technologists. So it's getting them the right to the training to look at working with modern user interfaces. We do it every day with Facebook and Apple, iOS devices and Android devices, but it's giving people the confidence to interact with the technology and get the best of the technology.

I think also as well, everybody in the NHS needs to be data driven and again and shouldn't be afraid of that. And we should be giving them the right training so they can embrace that, a new stage to make the best decisions possible. One change I could make is I think for me it would be remove the burden of the latest technology because having witnessed it myself, it's such a time barrier burden for nurses, midwives. So I would look at completely replacing all of that with a magic wand and making it easier for them.

Emily Burch: That's a really interesting question. I think there's something around the feedback loop. So making it easy for staff to understand why they're doing what they're doing and why digital is important. Feeding it back so they can genuinely see how it's going to make a difference to their patients. I think at the moment it's seen as such a separate identity that staff don't really take on board why it's meaningful for patient care. So finding a way to visualise and bring it back, like Florence Nightingale did in the Crimea war is bringing it back so staff understand why this is important to the patient.