Training: electronic attendance registerDesign of a fully client-based electronic attendance registration system in a UK district hospitalDr Michael Ogundele, Dr Baljinder Singh, Dr Stella Imong, Torbay Hospital. Abstract Tracking attendance at teaching and other departmental meetings in a busy hospital is highly desirable but can be time-consuming and very costly when implemented with a commercial software product. Introduction of an electronic attendance
registration system is one of the strategies recognised for
improving attendance at hospital grand rounds. We have
developed an easy-to-use and
effective web-based system which
allows doctors in training and other healthcare professionals to
record their attendance at various academic sessions organised by
the hospital. 1. BackgroundTime tracking is one of the most time consuming and costly overhead functions in many organizations [1]. A permanent record of individual attendance at different educational and clinical meetings is required by each healthcare professional for documentation of personal continuous professional development and learning portfolios [2]. An electronic attendance register has certain advantages over the traditional paper-based registers. It averts the risk of loss, theft or damage of paper-based registers. It can considerably reduce the cost and manpower associated with creating and archiving paper timesheets. It also significantly improves the accuracy and quality of the attendance data. It facilitates easy collation and analysis of the attendance data, to support evaluation and appraisals of different educational activities, monitoring individual professional development and for accurate comparison of performances across several healthcare organisations. 1.1 Importance of electronic attendance registers in improving organisation of hospital grand roundsThe educational role of grand rounds in continuing medical education of junior hospital doctors is unclear [3]. Despite the perceived educational importance, attendance at these meetings is generally poor. The proportion of clinical staff regularly attending grand rounds in Australia was estimated to be 10–50% by most respondents [4]. There has been little investigation into the factors influencing the staff members’ decision to attend hospital grand rounds [5]. Only 13% of rounds were based on a curricular structure, and 16% were based on needs assessments. The grand rounds topic was most often the choice of the presenter [6]. Introduction of an electronic attendance registration system is one of the strategies recognised for improving attendance at grand rounds [7]. Other measures include increased involvement of the faculty teachers and staff members, as well as paying attention to seminar location, time and content [8]. Previous studies have shown that attendance in the classes during teaching sessions had a direct impact on performance of students in the examinations. Students with good attendance show good results, while those with poor attendance are at risk of poor performance during examinations in basic medical sciences [9]. However, educational meeting attendance does not seem to correlate with in-training education of junior doctors [10,11]. 2. Time and attendance software deploymentTime and attendance software can be deployed via either Windows or web-based user interfaces. There are several commercial systems in the market but they are expensive. The cost of procuring, installing and maintaining these software products can be enormous. Further costs are incurred on consulting fees, requirements analysis, software configuration and testing, installation and deployment, ongoing maintenance and support services. The Windows-based interface is considered to be more expensive than the web-based systems because the software would involve installation on each desktop. Programme updates also need to be regularly reinstalled on each desktop. Network-based installations can be difficult to upgrade if users are running the software on a 24x7 basis. Desktop installation can require substantial resources on each machine in terms of disk space [12]. Traditional Windows-based client–server software requires an additional database layer of software to be installed on each desktop, requiring each end-user to make a separate connection to the database, which has a detrimental affect on the scalability of the software. Web-based technologies deployed through the intranet enables each end-user to accesses the time and attendance software through a web browser. The user interface or front-end component executes within the browser, either as HTML, Java, Active-X, or JavaScript. The server side applications can be developed and executed in a variety of ways, but Java, C++, Visual Basic, along with an application server, servlet, and/or active server pages are the most common back-end solutions [12]. The client component is typically a 'thin' component which requires no database software to be installed on the desktop. The client (front end) handles the data presentation and user interface and is most often a web browser [13]. 2.1 Basic requirement of an attendance electronic register systemMost time and attendance software systems have the following basic characteristics:
3. Methods and Design3.1 Preliminary assessment and requirement analysisIt was generally observed that the regular recording of attendance at the hospital grand rounds and other academic conferences was deficient. The register was often misplaced and sometimes not available during the meeting, and attendance had to be recorded on a temporary register which was often misplaced and not eventually transferred to the original register. 3.2 Electronic register developmentWe first attempted to develop an electronic register using Microsoft Office software. It consisted of a backend database of faculty members in MS Access and a front-end (user interface) created in MS Word for recording attendance at each academic meeting. The use of this system required a fair knowledge and understanding of Microsoft Office software, including ability to use MS Word “mail merger” tools. This system did not prove popular and was too cumbersome for some of the departmental staff to operate. We therefore developed an easy-to-use and effective web-based system that allows doctors and other healthcare professionals to record their attendance at various academic sessions organised by the hospital department.
Figure 1. A screenshot of the electronic register. The electronic attendance register is fully client/user-based and requires no access to the web server. It therefore requires no ongoing maintenance or support by the hospital information technology administrators. It therefore incurs no extra cost to the hospital and runs no risk of disruptions associated with temporary server breakdown or during routine maintenance work. It is kept very simple and user-friendly so that it can be used by every health personnel with minimal previous skills or knowledge of computers. It only requires a web browser, which is already installed on every hospital desktop and most users are familiar with. 3.3 Special featuresThe user interface was developed entirely in HTML and Javascript. The server end is replaced with an email system that receives all the data input, from which an administrator can complete a record-of-attendance register. This record can then be archived, including entry into an administrative database. It has in-built checks to avoid double entries for individual participants and prevent the data for each meeting to be sent more than once. The data collected include date and time of meeting, presenter and topic of teaching, venue, a record of attendance and any special comments. 3.4 Routine maintenance and supportThe only routine maintenance required for the use of the electronic register is the regular updating of the list of the faculty members. 3.5 Report of user satisfactionThe introduction of the system has been welcomed by staff. The introduction of the system has helped to eliminate the traditional paper-based register which has often been accidentally misplaced and occasionally defaced in the past. Both the quality and completeness of attendance record was greatly improved after the introduction of the electronic register. 4. ConclusionWe have developed a simple thin-client-programmed web-based electronic attendance register for monitoring hospital grand rounds participation. We have found the system to be extremely easy to use, preferred to a similar windows-based system, user-friendly and executed with minimal cost to the hospital. It requires an administrator to collate the register data for each meeting and develop a permanent record or update a dedicated register database. Introduction of an electronic attendance registration system in a busy hospital has led to greatly improved proportion and quality of academic meeting attendance records. MO Ogundele, Paediatric Registrar, Department of Paediatrics, Torbay Hospital, Torquay, UK. B Singh, Consultant Paediatrician, Department of Paediatrics, Torbay Hospital, Torquay, UK. Dr Stella Imong, Consultant Paediatrician/Clinical Director, Torbay Hospital, Torquay, UK. Correspondence: Dr M Ogundele, 40 Redruth Road, Liverpool, L11 6NA, UK. Tel: +44 (0)7742199280. Email: References
|
|
||
|
|
|||
