Ward trolley
A round trolley or documentation car is in clinics and hospitals in the visit of the doctor during patient use and is used within the station operation as a central repository for medical patient documentation. The trolley holds all the work equipment required to document and carry out a visit, such as patient files or X-rays , and can usually be locked for reasons of data protection . Due to the increasing digitization of patient care and documentation, ward trolleys are increasingly being equipped with modern IT workstation devices such as notebooks or tablet PCs. Other variants use what is known as thin client technology, so that no sensitive data is kept on the rounds trolley.
Classic ward trolleys
A classic rounds trolley usually holds the entire medical patient documentation so that it is available to the doctor during patient rounds on site. In addition to hanging files for documentation, ward trolleys usually contain large-format compartments for holding images from various imaging processes such as X-rays or computer tomographies . In addition, there is usually a storage facility for the nursing patient documentation. Depending on the medical specialty, common consumables are carried with you, for example tongue depressors , gloves , blood pressure monitors or a stethoscope .
In hospitals and clinics that process all or part of their patient documentation digitally, the classic ward trolleys are replaced or temporarily equipped with laptops . Disadvantages of this variant are the limited running time of a few hours and the non-compliance with the high hygienic requirements of a hospital because of the difficult cleaning. In addition, laptops belong to the so-called fat clients , which only keep the data locally. This leads to an increased risk of data loss through destruction or theft.
Digital ward trolleys
While in the past all documents were documented in paper form, patient data is increasingly being recorded and accessed electronically, including due to legal requirements. This changes the design from ward trolleys to digital or digital ward trolleys with hybrid technology. Purely digital ward trolleys are ideal for fully modernized, paperless hospitals. These extremely slim and light trolleys offer great advantages in terms of their mobility and low space requirements.
The hybrid trolley represents a combined solution of the classic and purely digital ward trolley. It offers the accommodation options of a classic ward trolley, while still allowing access to electronic patient data . These cars can be differentiated based on the information technology used. On the one hand, there is the “ Fat Client ” technology, in which a full PC workstation with local resources such as RAM and hard disk is available, and on the other hand, the “ Thin Client ” technology, in which no local resources are made available. Due to its significantly lower power consumption, the latter also offers the advantage of a longer runtime without charging interruptions. The components of the hybrid trolley include a classic substructure of the traditional ward trolley, an input and output unit ( washable keyboard , mouse and flat screen), WLAN unit, power and battery module for supplying energy to the ward trolley and a charge level indicator.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Peter A. Hamann, Hermann Fenger: General Medicine and Law , Specialist and Law Series, Springer, 2004, ISBN 3540011579 , page 96
- ↑ Hospital IT-Journal: Digital ward trolley from LEAN and Optiplan , issue 1/2009, page 73