published

Smoking in Pregnancy Project Report: June 2012
I think it’s good, because I think every mum they would have been asked anyway as part
of booking, but again it feels like you’re just ticking a box if you haven’t got something
you can do with that. So although we would give verbal advice at that time, and then
subsequently when we see them it’s an opportunity again to ask ... with this project ...
then you’ve got somewhere to recommend, so I think it encourages us to do it (P2)
I welcome it, because like I say it raises the profile, it makes it a standard question. It
makes it normal for the client the fact that we are asking about that, and we’ve got
somewhere to refer them into, so it’s all positive ... I think it’s time well spent myself (P2)
Ease of using the system
Although the HCPs interviewed had not yet had the opportunity to test out the web based
referral system in practice, most had had the opportunity to practice with a ‘dummy referral’.
Those that had experience of this commented that they had found the process easy to use,
calling it ‘user friendly’ and efficient.
I did do a test, a pretend name, very useful, very easy (P2)
Well having played with it on the trial if you like, it seems easy to use…all the midwives
that are involved in the booking process have had the training on how to use it. We’ve
set up with IT a desktop icon so when they’re doing electronic bookings they can just
click on the icon rather than typing in a web address, so that’s going to make it easier
for them. And to be honest it only takes a couple of minutes to fill in and complete (P4)
In a number of cases it was suggested that paper referrals can sometimes be written at the
time of referral, however for a number of reasons, not end up being delivered to the specialist
stop smoking midwife or local stop smoking service. It was thought that having the web
based referral system could resolve this problem.
We don’t know how many of the fax referrals weren’t done because either the fax was
written out and then not faxed and it got lost, or put in the files, you know what I mean,
there’s a lot of opportunities for human error (P5)
Ethical and practical issues
Despite support for the implementation of the web based referral, a number of potential
issues were also raised however. A key issue was the sharing of personal information
electronically, both in terms of concerns of how secure this process was and also the potential
for delays to the physical implementation of the new system. This problem was mentioned
by many of the staff, and identified as part of the reason for the delay to the implementation
of the current referral pathway under discussion.
The barriers that we came across was the sharing of information, that’s what delayed
the implementation of it (P1)
The downsides have been the information governance and everything that’s been a bit
of a problem really (P4)
28