The app is designed to work on all Apple iOS and Android devices.

So you just need a device and a data signal.

Yes…assuming you keep your device secure. All communication data is encrypted so the only place the information can be read is on your device, logged into the app on the correct account and from the corresponding team.

You need to adhere to maintaining patient confidentiality (ensuring your device remains secure, sharing your team with only the people that need to work with you) as you would with any digital application.

Download the app for free in the App Store. Create your personal account and follow the initial instructions to set up your team, wards and add your initial compliment of beds that you are looking after.

Invite members to your team using your unique team code to start working in sync with them. When looking at your team or ward lists, select the menu icon in the top right and then press ‘Manage my wards’ from the pop up menu.

On the following screen you will see your team’s unique code in the grey bar below your team’s name.

Ask your team member to go to the same ‘Manage teams & wards’ screen and select ‘Add team’ in the top right. Press ‘Join’ from the pop up option window and then type the unique team code into this box.

Click the menu icon in the top right and go to ‘Manage teams & wards’ where you will see all your teams and wards.  Next to the team title select ‘Members’. 

On this screen you can see who is currently in your team and have the option to remove them.

Once you have your team, wards and beds set up you can start creating jobs.

Go to the ward screen showing the list of beds on the ward you need to create a job on. Tap ‘Create’ on the corresponding bed and the jobs creations screen will open. Use the categories to locate the job you want to create and simply tap each job you wish to perform. The selected jobs will have a hashed outer box.

Now press ‘Back’ in the top left of the screen to return to the ward view. You will see the number of jobs assigned to the bed has now changed to match.

To help you keep track of who you have seen on the ward round you can tap the job number indicator on the ward view screen for each bed as you see them.  This turns it blue for the day, so marks that patient as seen.

You can review jobs a number of ways:

– by bed – select ‘Review’ for that bed on the ward view screen

– by ward – select ‘Review Jobs’ at the bottom of the ward view screen

– by team – select ‘Review Jobs’ at the bottom of the team view screen

– everything – select ‘Review Jobs’ at the bottom of the dashboard

Regardless of which screen you view the jobs in, the list of jobs is displayed by category to make working through them easier.

Ward Round Companion follows a traffic light colour scheme for job progression. There are 3 phases available but not all jobs require 3 phases to complete.  In general jobs can be progressed red-amber-green but sometimes just straight to green.

To progress a job you can do it individually by tapping the individual job button.

You can also group advance jobs by bed or by category by pressing the respective name bars. This helps speed up ticking jobs off.

When any job is displayed as green it is regarded as completed and can be cleared by pressing the ‘Clear completed jobs’ bar that appears at the top of the review screen. This bar only appears when there are completed jobs.

One tap of this button clears all jobs marked as completed.

Go to the ward that you want to add beds to. Click the menu icon in the top right of the screen and select ‘Manage beds on ward’ from the pop up menu.  This takes you to the bed management screen.

Here you can add new beds and modify existing beds if needed.

Remember to press the green ‘Done’ button to save your changes! You will then be returned to the ward view.

When you are ready to remove a patient from your ward, from the ward list select ‘Review’ for that individual patient, now tap the blue ‘Update this patient’ bar at the bottom of the screen.  From this sub-menu tap ‘Discharge patient’.

The screen will refresh and the bed will have disappeared from you ward screen.

Go to the job creation screen (see ‘How do I create jobs?’ FAQ). At the top of this screen there is a date indicator.  Tap this to show the date selection wheels. Just select the date you want the job or jobs to be created for and then create away.

Go to the review screen for either your team, ward or bed (see ‘How do I review jobs?’ FAQ). Select the menu icon in the top right of the screen and then select ‘Scheduled jobs’ from the pop up menu.

You will then have a list of all your scheduled jobs.  You have the option to delete any scheduled job that is no longer required.

When you see the ‘Defer Jobs’ button on one of the review screens this is a quick option allowing you to move ‘non-urgent’ or ‘not possible at the current time’ jobs to a later date. Basically all the stuff you don’t want to hassle the on call team with but still needs to be done.

It is set to tomorrow’s date as a default but you can quickly change this to any date in the future.

To help you keep track of who you have seen on the ward round you can tap the individual bed job number indicator on the ward view screen. This turns it blue for the day, so marks that patient as seen.

When you are on the ward view looking at your list of beds, if you press the bed details you will open the note page.  Enter anything you need to here and then click save.

Any bed with some notes attached has an ‘i’ indicator in the details bar.

Notes will have a time stamp at the top telling you who made the most recent changes and when.

The ‘i’ indicator will turn red if there are any changes to a note that you haven’t seen yet.

Once you have reviewed the note the ‘i’ will turn black again.