Occupational Therapy News OTnews April 2019 | Page 40

FEATURE Q&A
‘‘
groups, Wiki’s and
I would really like to hear from
Champions just
Skype.
members who are leading activities
need to be experts in their
Champions just
in relation to digital literacy so
clinical field and be able to
need to be experts
that we can better understand
in their clinical
the scope of this work and
translate what the service
field and be
develop service examples to
needs access to, as well as
able to translate
share with other members and
ideas
around
how
the
service
what the service
organisations who are looking
needs access to,
proactively
at citizen digital
could use digital capabilities
as well as ideas
literacy.
to offer choice and improve
around how the
patient safety.
service could use
OTnews: Where are there some
digital capabilities to offer
good examples of occupational
choice and improve patient
therapists digitalising their services?
safety.
SE: I recently visited the West Suffolk occupational
If you are a digital champion for your team,
therapy team, which is part of NHS England’s Global
a good starting point is to connect with your local
Digital Exemplar Programme. This team has shared
eAHP or CCIO and find out how to contribute to your
their learning and experiences of implementing a new
local digital transformation plans.
electronic patient record through the creation of a
blueprint. This blueprint is the first AHP service example
OTnews: What digital skills do occupational
from the national programme and can be found on the
therapists need?
futureNHS collaboration platform. Visit: https://future.
SE: If you are using a laptop, tablet or smart phone at
nhs.uk.
work or in your personal life, there is a good chance
you have a good degree of digital literacy. Over the
OTnews: It all sounds fantastic, but are there
coming months, I will be producing resources to
risks?
support members, for example getting to grips with
SE: With any change project, there are risks and
coded terminology (SNOMED CT), as well as setting up
it is important that, as a team, you are open about
a virtual networking group.
concerns and talk about ways of mitigating risks. In
Members who are working on digital transformation
relation to digital transformation, it is healthy to consider
projects are encouraged to get in touch with me so
what data you are capturing and how it shared.
that we can consider and share our learning around
It is also important to think about how digital
developing a digitally literate workforce.
technologies impact on human connection in practice.
For these reasons, that is why digital transformation is
OTnews: What about the digital literacy of
not about things, but ways of practising.
citizens?
It is about offering choice and thinking about
SE: With an increasing number of services becoming
the activities that you do that are administratively
digitalised, such as banking, transport and shopping, I
time consuming and considering if digital tools can
believe that we as occupational therapists have a key
decrease that burden. The best way we can do this as
role in assessing and supporting the digital literacy skills
a profession is to share our practice stories and learn
of citizens so that they can fully participate in a digital
from one another about the potential opportunities and
society.
challenges to digitalising services.
This could take many forms, from asking people
about how they use digital devices, to support
Suzy England, RCOT professional adviser in health
engagement in occupations, as well as signposting to
informatics, email: [e-mail] or Twitter:
local services who provide digital literacy support.
@RCOT_Suzy
40 OTnews April 2019