Less clicks to critical notes; addressing safety concerns of veterinary clinics | Nooranah Malberg

Problem

Users, veterinary staff, were missing crucial detail of a pet's behavioural needs, which posed a safety risk to other pets at the clinic and anyone handling that pet. This was because that information was sometimes missed when bookings were made and when it was noted, it was suppressed within a long pet profile page. While pets in the system had a visual indicator for their behavioural profile (i.e. “Nervous”), vets had to exit their consultation workflow to get the details they needed to deliver care safely.

Outcome

Since many vets expressed how important the notes were to their decision-making, I redesigned a few areas and components in Ascend, Covetrus’ cloud-based veterinary management system, to make them more salient in bookings and consultations. My prototypes performed well in user testing sessions and customers expressed their satisfaction with the update when it was released. Overall, it reduced the context switch cost vets were facing.

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.