technology
An award-winning app developed
by a nurse is bringing surgical
setups into the 21st century.
Beth Wozniak interviewed by Patrick Avenell
B
eth Wozniak is a nurse in the Hunter Region
of NSW. She is the founder of Scrubit, a new
app that modernises hospital procedures.
“Since completing my nursing degree in
Queensland, I’ve worked in many operating
theatres and often found that surgery setups were
incomplete, meaning you’d see staff running
from the theatre in the middle of a case to grab
instruments needed to safely complete the surgery,”
Wozniak said.
“Outdated processes cost hospitals thousands in
wasted time and money and add to patients’ safety
risk. Currently, nurses setting up for surgeries flick
through various printed Word documents to see
what’s circled, then quickly try to find everything,
which is time-consuming, difficult for younger and
newer staff, and can be riddled with errors.”
Nursing Review sat down with Wozniak to discuss
the platform’s development, implementation and
future.
NR: Tell us about Scrubit. What does it do and
how did you get the idea?
Scrub app
before surgery
Photo: Scrubit
26 | nursingreview.com.au
BW: Scrubit is a software application used in
operating theatres that assists nurses and staff to
collect all the items and instruments for a surgery
correctly and efficiently every time. I came up
with the idea during my first year out of uni. I was
consistently finding that the setups for surgery were
either incomplete or incorrect. It meant that staff
had to actually leave the operating theatre to go and
grab the items or instruments that were required.
Not only was this inefficient and slowed down the
operating theatres, it meant the people gathering
the items for surgery were taking far too long to do
the setups. People are employed, often, purely to do
that job. It takes hours and is inefficient and often
leads to many mistakes.
They’re currently using Word documents, so
as you can see, written word is nowhere near as
good as photos. So, our system provides photos,
reference numbers, item locations. It actually
sends the users on the quickest route to collect the
items. Staff can do multiple setups in one go. It just
improves the whole system. It means that people
aren’t leaving the operating theatre to go and fix up
the mistakes, and all in all it improves the process.
How did you go about building this program?
I contacted a family friend [Lloyd Davies] from
Newcastle – he’s a software developer. I spoke to
him about the idea. He was kind of blown away that
hospitals are still using archaic systems and Word
documents. He was really keen to get involved. We
worked together over a period of 12 months and
came up with how we were going to run it and the