Nursing Internship Platform
This UX research & design project aimed to recreate the nursing internship landscape in Austria through a holistic digitalisation approach, driven by comprehensive research and user-centered design.
The work within this project formed the basis for a paper we published at dHealth, a conference for digital health. Check out the paper.
Company:
Fachhochschule Salzburg GmbH
Role:
Lead Research UX Design
Year:
2023
The goal
Digitalisation of competency tracking is needed in order to simplify internship management
In Austria, the nursing internship process of nursing students is still handled and documented on pen and paper. Paper-based internship documents posed many challenges, ranging from errors to time inefficiency. The project's goal was to get to know how the user groups work with the documents in order to create a catalogue of requirements for a web-based nursing internship platform. This platform, tailored to the unique needs of Salzburg's healthcare landscape, aimed to simplify internship management.
Research Questions:
Which steps in the current process (paper version) make efficient work particularly difficult and cause a high mental load?
Which features could a digitalised internship platform provide to enable more efficient work and decrease mental load?
One solution for all people and tasks. Less effort. No redundancy. Better communication.
Brainstorming Workshop
Brainstorming sessions with 70 participants of all user groups were performed in order to get an overall understanding of the project, a feeling for the user’s pain points and to get all user groups on board. The participants were asked to collect their current problems, as well as wishes and fears about the proposed project.
Contextual Inquiries & Interviews
the current process is chaotic and unclear, steps & communication lack completeness
We went to several hospitals and rehabiliation centres to undertake contextual inquiries. Here, we got deep insights into the work of nurses and students. We observed them doing their work, asked plenty of questions and got to see their work environment and equipment.
Based on the previous research, user scenarios and first user stories for future features were developed.
In small groups, we conducted semi-structured interviews regarding those results and deliverables and asked open questions to further our work.
low-fidelity prototype
a visual tool for further research & feedback
Users wish for a new progress report concept
Focus Groups
Within the focus groups, potential users got to see the results of the first iterations of the platform design, which were presented as a low-fidelity prototype, printed on paper for easy access. The users had discussions about the current design concept considering specific questions and were able to provide feedback through notes and sketches on paper.
The results of these research methods were documented and analysed, which formed the basis for feature definition and design implications.
The platform promises streamlined competency tracking, predefined learning objectives, enhanced communication, and a digital repository for all intern and institution-related data.
This UX research journey produced several deliverables that serve as a basis for development:
User Scenarios
User Stories
Authorisation concept
Data protection and security requirements
lo-fi prototype
The deliverables:
“the vision of a holistic digitalisation journey is not just attainable but imperative”
Conclusion
The project delivers the basis for the planned following implementation of the “internship platform” in the federal state of Salzburg.
In conclusion, the complete digitalisation of the nursing internship documents and accompanying processes in the sense of a web-based “internship platform” is technically feasible, meaningful and convertible in regards to content and will represent a significant benefit for the user groups upon implementation.