Best practices

Begin by identifying the unique needs of your healthcare organisation. What resources are people currently using? What are their strengths and deficiencies?

What information is essential for your staff to work day to day? Can they access this already and if not what are the barriers?

What are the key challenges you aim to address with the toolbox?

We recommend that you do a baseline survey to learn how your staff  find the information they need, what difficulties they encounter. See the pages Implementation guide and Forms and guides.

Involving key stakeholders from early on in your project is very important. Your team will typically involve the postgraduate education team, library staff, the hospital IT department, and end-users such as doctors in training and other healthcare professionals. Their input is critical for understanding requirements and garnering support.

A key secret of success is having a couple of trainee lead editors. They will be able to grow and nurture your hospital site. As well as providing content that they found they needed from their clinical work they will be able to be a conduit to gather feedback out the site from their colleagues, and also let the hospital know about the resource.

Your hospital IT department should also be able to help you with the project. Our software is securely hosted on cloud services so no physical installation is required. Whilst the information we process never contains patient information and is not considered to be high risk, your IT department may require a Data Privacy Impact Assessment, if this is the case we will be happy to help. 

The organisation and presentation of information is crucial in it being useful to end users. We have developed a structure and search function to make this as easy as possible for you. You should develop a clear and intuitive structure for organising content, and this may require feedback from end users and improvements.  

The toolbox software allows to quickly organise and reorganise the content into a tree-like structure of pages and subpages. Feel free to do this if the structure can be improved. You can also contact the support team at any time if you have questions or difficulties.

Consider creating sections for clinical guidelines, policies, departmental resources, educational materials, and more. Ensure that information is easily discoverable. 

Successful toolboxes have many or all of the following categories: 

It is important to define roles and responsibilities for content ownership and maintenance. Assign administrators or content managers who are responsible for keeping information up-to-date.

This is particularly important during changeover periods when trainee editors change hospital and new lead editors will need to be recruited. 

We have made the site as easy as possible to navigate, edit, and administrate.

Offer ongoing training and support to users, especially new staff members, to help them navigate the toolbox effectively.

Encourage user engagement and collaboration by allowing staff to contribute, share insights, and collaborate on projects or initiatives within the toolbox. Lead editors to the toolbox can receive certificates for their portfolios.

Establish feedback channels where users can report issues, suggest improvements, or request additional content. Regularly review and act upon user feedback to enhance the toolbox utility.

It is possible to integrate the toolbox with other hospital systems. The main ways in which this is possible is with Guidelines Synchronisation and also autologin where it is possible to install a one click login to hospital desktop computers.

Implement a quality assurance process to verify the accuracy and reliability of clinical guidelines, procedures, and other local information published on the toolbox. Conduct periodic audits to review the content for accuracy, relevancy, and compliance with medical standards and guidelines.

Hold regular review meetings with the content owners, administrators, and stakeholders to assess the toolbox performance, address issues, and plan for enhancements.

Every toolbox page can have a dedicated maintainer, and editors can mark the pages as "reviewed" when the information is accurate. You can see a list of all pages, their review dates, and their reviewers, in the Analytics page (reachable from the Administration panel).

Curate the content to ensure it is organised logically and remains easy to find. Regularly review the toolbox structure and navigation to accommodate evolving needs.

Identify and retire outdated or obsolete content. Archive or remove materials that are no longer relevant to prevent clutter and confusion.

Actively promote the toolbox to hospital staff. Conduct training sessions, send regular updates and reminders, and highlight success stories to encourage adoption.

From the Administration panel, you will find links to generate reports, posters and QR codes about your toolbox. Follow the instructions in order to configure, customise, and export to PDF these posters, then print them and put them up in doctors' mess and other places where your staff can see them. See Promote your Toolbox site and app.

Track usage metrics and analytics to gauge the effectiveness of the toolbox. Monitor user engagement, content popularity, and any issues that arise.

This can be done using your hospital Analytics page. It also can be done by reviewing the Search Cloud and seeing what your users have been looking for.

Acknowledge and celebrate the successes and positive outcomes achieved through the use of the toolbox. Highlight how it has improved patient care, efficiency, and knowledge sharing.

We have created an Excellence Report Form which allows your users to nominate colleagues for their improvement work. 

The Toolbox platform has a number of tools that help creating and maintaining a knowledge base, and a technical support team that takes care of the server and software.

Starting and maintaining a hospital toolbox requires careful planning, collaboration, and ongoing commitment. By following these best practices, you can create a valuable resource that enhances the quality of care, promotes collaboration, and supports the professional development of healthcare staff within your organisation.

Effective maintenance is essential to keep a hospital toolbox valuable and aligned with the evolving needs of healthcare professionals. By following these best practices, healthcare organizations can ensure that the toolbox remains a trusted resource for accessing critical medical information and supporting high-quality patient care.