MediDial cards: a quick win for service improvement

One of the key roles of a junior doctor is co-ordinating the care of their patients and communicating with different departments or specialties within the hospital. To do this, junior doctors often spend a lot of time on a daily basis contacting the hospital switchboard in order to locate a required bleep/extension/fax number, or trying to navigate an intranet based directory which can be difficult to use. We aimed to improve this task for junior doctors as a pilot project for engaging junior doctors in service improvement. Our multi-disciplinary team, led by junior doctors and with the support of the Trust, produced and implemented lanyard (MediDial) cards containing common and relevant (fax, bleep, and extension) numbers for use by junior doctors. Through the introduction of our MediDial cards we not only reduced the frequency junior doctors needed to contact the switchboard on a daily basis, but also the length of time spent waiting to speak to an operator. The MediDial cards were also found to be time saving and more useful than the previous intranet based database. Since the introduction of the MediDial cards, the project has been rolled out across the Trust and presented at Grand Rounds as an example of junior doctor led service improvement, aiming to encourage trainees to engage with quality improvement projects.