To help your staff, particularly your nurses, save time and work more efficiently, purchasing a patient room whiteboards can help accomplish that goal. 

When hospital beds fill up and nurses are short on time, every distraction in the workplace means more stress, less treatment time and an overall lower quality of care for patients. Overworked nurses are not beneficial for a healthcare facility, its patients or the profitability of the business. Making patient-centered decisions, such as design choices and purchasing tools and equipment, can help improve patient satisfaction and the overall business of the facility. When you provide for your care team, they will have more time to provide for their patients. 

This concept applies to the whiteboards you place in patient rooms; they can serve as tools that help your nurses save time by becoming more efficient. This allows them to reduce their levels of stress and better care for patients. There are many ways the right whiteboards can help your facility accomplish this. 

#1: Making Communication Easier 

Overwhelming research has shown that healthcare whiteboards help improve patient communication and overall care, but not all whiteboards are created equal in this regard. It’s not only about placing a whiteboard in every patient room. A fair amount of thought and planning needs to go into the design of the board and the content and placement of the information fields. That’s the beauty of custom whiteboards; they allow you to choose which information fields to include and omit based on the needs of your patients and how providers will be communicating with them. 

When your whiteboard is designed and tailored to the treatment style of your care teams, nurses will be able to seamlessly incorporate them into their treatment plans without even giving them a second thought. This will enable nurses to use their whiteboards effectively, quickly communicating necessary information and cutting down on the number of times patients will call them back to their rooms to answer questions and gain additional information. 

#2: Cutting Down on Cleaning and Maintenance 

Keeping whiteboards clean and properly disinfected is vital to the safety of patients and nurses, but cleaning whiteboards doesn’t have to be a time-consuming task. Whether your care teams are wiping away previously written down information, cleaning the board, or fully cleansing and disinfecting the board, the job should be able to be completed quickly. With the right whiteboards, made from high quality materials, care teams should be able to effortlessly wipe away writing without worrying about ghosting and faded marks. They should also not have to hunt down a specific type of cleaner to disinfect a board. The right whiteboards will be easy to clean with common hospital grade cleaners, and they should be able to hold up to repeated cleaning without becoming worn down or damaged. 

#3: Even the Small Details Matter 

At Ghent Healthcare, we understand that the details matter, even the small ones. From translating information to different languages to simply needing a marker, the right whiteboards will provide the tools nurses need to quickly use their whiteboards and move on with their day of caring for their patients. That’s why our custom whiteboards come with a variety of features that make all of this possible. From printing multilingual information fields on whiteboards to changeable inserts that offer new information and languages, to simple trays that keep markers from getting lost in the fray, every feature of our whiteboards help nurses work quickly and efficiently.

Need some ideas for designing your patient room whiteboard? Download our ideabook. Have any questions? Get in touch with our team today.