Abstract:
Ward clerk is a support service position for medical services by multidisciplinary teams and ward management, under the responsibility of the nursing department. It is intended to support the implementation of the unit to achieve maximum performance. This experimental development research, with two groups, case-control pre- test and posttest design, aimed to develop ward clerk services by using existing resources. It was developed and implemented in ICU Med2 at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital from April 20, 2555 to February 9, 2556. ICU Med1, a similar ward, was selected to be the control. The sample was 263 current word clerks and 82 others who responded to questionnaires. The results were compared between before and after the experiment in five aspects: quantity, quality, time and labor use, satisfaction of all parties, and its value. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, the Mann Whitney U-test, an independent sample t test, a paired-t test, and the Wilcoxon Signed Rank test at alpha=0.05. The results showed that the new working model was developed by principles and regulations applied by the use of the existing resources to achieve maximum performance, and to focus on the participation of all those involved as ward clerks. The main elements of the model that are right for the area does not add to the workload. It was composed of 7 steps, which included standard operating workflow and was easy to follow. The results of the experiment showed that the new performance was better than the original model, the percentage of quantity performance increased (p <0.001); the percentage of staff who followed correct working standards increased (p <0.001); time and labor decreased (p <0.001) and the satisfaction rates of ward clerks (p = 0.019) and nurses (p = 0.021) increased. Those involved cooperated as well. Further research on best practices, as well as demonstrations of this methodology, are recommended as a good example of highly efficient, uncomplicated, easy to develop, and a continuous and practical routine to research.