Dr Toolbox App

Image: From left to right - Dr A Duncan, Dr L Marshall, Dr G Oda & Dr L Fochesato

Dr Toolbox is a secure online information resource to help to better orientate Junior Doctors within their Trust. It includes easily accessible information to ensure that Junior Doctors can be as efficient and effective as possible in carrying out their role; it compliments and supports the Junior Doctor Induction Programme and allows new junior doctors to feel more confident in navigating their way around the organisation. This, in turn, has a positive impact on patient safety, as well as education and training.

In October 2020, Health Education England (HEE), Yorkshire & Humber, approached all Trusts in the region regarding their ambition to encourage local Trust to adopt and implement the Dr Toolbox app. Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust was the first Trust in the locality to formally register an interest.  As part of the roll out, HEE offered a financial contribution of £5,000 to support the administration, planning and integration of Dr Toolbox within the Trust.

A working group was set up within the Trust on the 30 September 2020, this consisted of Dr Lucille Marshall, CT2 Psychiatrist, Gillian Hughes, Medical Directorate & Medical Education Manager, Dr Alasdair Duncan, Specialty Doctor, and LAS doctors Dr Gabriella Oda and Dr Larissa Fochesato. The target launch date, as set by HEE, was defined as the 2^nd December 2020, there was no option to breach this timescale and hence all planning, resource gathering and administrative work had to be completed within this 8-week window.

The group discussed and agreed the type of information that was important to new Junior Doctors joining the Trust. They then pinpointed these information as categories or ‘tabs’, which they felt would be most useful to incorporate into the app. The team outlined information they could capture themselves from their own resources and knowledge base, and which data would best be provided by other Doctors within the organisation. For example, Dr A Duncan created the much-anticipated ‘On-Call’ tab, Dr G Oda & Dr L Fochesato created a timely ‘Wellbeing’ tab, and Dr Lucille Marshall created one about the physical health monitoring requirements of inpatients.

The team’s in-house experts included Consultant Psychiatrists Dr Michael Stephenson, who created a ‘Psychotherapy’ tab, and Dr Soraya Mayet, who supported Dr Shumaila Shahbaz on creating one about ‘Addictions’.

The Trust recognised the contribution that the app could make regarding supporting Junior Doctors with the COVID-19 response. Dr Duncan subsequently created a tab that outlines what Junior Doctors need to know to work as safely as possible. This directs readers to useful links in the Trust’s Intranet and acts as a complementary information resource.

All working group members are editors for the app, which is to be reviewed and maintained on a regular basis. Because of the volume of work required to set the app up, in terms of the transference of information and formatting it, another temporary member of the working group was recruited. The app would not be as organised or as aesthetically pleasing without the help of Programme Administrator, Sally Costello.

In order to measure the effectiveness of the app and the information included, Dr Lucille Marshall produced and distributed a survey for Junior Doctors who started to work in the Trust from August 2020, to learn more about their induction experience. The survey was based on the example included on the Dr Toolbox website but highly revised to make it relevant to the psychiatric setting. This will be repeated next year for Junior Doctors who start working for the Trust from August 2021, to enable the team to assess the improvements made to Junior Doctors’ induction experience by the introduction of the Dr Toolbox app, via a comparison of pre- and post- introduction survey responses.

Junior Doctors currently working at the Trust have had access to the app since 13^th November 2020. The working group has so many exciting ideas for the future of the app and are hoping to engage with all groups of Junior Doctors to ensure the content represents and engages their interests.

To date, there has been particularly positive feedback on the Psychotherapy tab and the team are hoping to receive ongoing feedback on other tabs to enable them to improve, mould and shape its content to fit the needs of its users.

Finally, although the app was originally designed to supplement the local induction, it has become clear that it is so much more versatile, in that it will not only benefit Junior Doctors throughout their training at the Trust, but non-training grade Junior Doctors as well.

Find the app here: https://www.dr-toolbox.com/HFT. Please take a look and provide any feedback to lucilleedith.marshall@nhs.net