Surfacing clinician notes for enhanced veterinary safety | Nooranah Malberg

Problem

Customers reported on Pendo that they were missing crucial detail of a pet's behavioural issue before and during veterinary consults. Through contextual enquiries and interviews, we pinpointed the issue to be low visibility of patient behavioral notes.

Outcome

The problem posed major safety issues and disruptions to clinics. Therefore, I designed a comprehensive redesign of Ascend's scheduling and consult workflows to improve the visibility of the notes. It tested well among all participants and the feature release was well-received by the wider customer base.

Role

I was a part of the product team and worked closely with engineers.

Research

The second most popular Pendo request by customers was for more pop-up alerts to warn them of incoming pets with behavioural issues. The reason they cited was that critical information was being missed too often.

Internally, we also had a clue that this was an important problem because of past customer stories. Clinics that knew a pet prone to aggression, for example, have shared that they would advise clients to stay in the carpark. The vets and nurses would typically administer the treatment outside of the clinic to avoid any safety issues or disruption towards other clients.

To gather more information as to how the notes were being used, I interviewed two veterinarians from two different clinic types:

· A) A national veterinary clinic franchise on RxWorks (legacy PMS)

· B) An independently-owned small clinic on Ascend.

I discovered that pop-ups were already implemented in the legacy system to alert vets of behavioural issues from clinic A. And that they weren't effective as the clinic manager's vets often dismissed these pop-ups to proceed with the task at hand.

At clinic B, I learnt that the details of the behavioural issue was just as important as the pet's behavioural status itself. Specific triggers or preferred handling techniques were often captured in these 'behavioural notes', which was crucial to ensure a smooth veterinary visit for their clients.

Wireframes

It became evident that a pet's behavioral status was not the only important detail. Notes were a key part of the scheduling and consultation workflows, so I sketched a few ideas to improve their visibility.

Before, veterinary staff had to exit their existing workflow in Ascend to navigate to patient notes, which was inefficient for busy clinics. I explored several alternatives to surface the behavioral notes and status at key points in the workflow, and I presented these for discussion and feedback with the wider team.

Because the low visibility of behavioral alerts and notes was the problem, the scope of this project expanded beyond the initial request for pop-ups.

I prioritized the key areas within Ascend where these notes needed greater salience in scheduling workflows and designed a responsive header component with code reusability in mind.

Prototype

We tested the design remotely with existing customers before development for satisfaction and effectiveness.

All participants were able to find the information they needed. Overall, the reception was positive and participants were pleased to see that a comprehensive solution was being implemented for reducing safety incidents. Because we over-delivered on the request, I believe that it contributed positively to the restoration of confidence.