St Luke’s Hospice provides palliative care and support across Sheffield, based at their site on Little Common Lane.
Services include 24-hour care via their Inpatient centre and outpatient sessions across various specialties, such as physiotherapy and bereavement support for patients and families. Alongside this they also provide at home community nursing services throughout the region.
The organisation required a new EPR system to be used across all the services, launched, simultaneously, during one go live date in
September 2024.
St Luke’s chose to implement SystmOne to streamline workflows across their service and connect to a shared, dynamic medical record to enhance overall patient care.
In November 2023, St Luke’s Hospice commissioned NECS to provide end user training and go-live support for their migration to SystmOne.
The challenge
This project required a strong focus on developing service-specific training plans and delivering comprehensive go-live support across the hospice. Over 100 staff members, with varying levels of experience with electronic patient records (EPRs) and SystmOne, needed to be trained. Staff roles spanned multiple service lines, each with different priorities and workflows, adding complexity to both training content and delivery.
Training sessions had to be delivered over an eight week period during the summer, ensuring that staff gained the necessary skills while maintaining service delivery. Additionally, close collaboration with the established local SystmOne team at St Luke’s was essential to provide tailored support throughout the migration.
Our response
St Luke’s were allocated a Training Lead who attended regular project meetings to collaborate with St Luke’s staff, ensuring alignment on deployment plans, training requirements and methods of delivery. Discussions with key stakeholders helped shape the training strategy and organisation of resources.
We developed detailed, role-specific training materials tailored to the needs of the SystmOne Palliative Hospital Unit and St Luke’s staff. Training plans were designed to accommodate various job roles and unit-specific processes, ensuring that every staff member received relevant and practical training.
The Clinical System Training team delivered a combination of remote and on-site training over a seven-week period. In total, 40 sessions were conducted, training over 100 staff members.
We simultaneously maintained a realistic demo environment that allowed staff to practice using SystmOne in a hands-on setting. This gave employees the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the system prior to going live.
The NECS team kept detailed records of training attendance and captured feedback and questions during each session. Weekly reports were provided to St Luke’s project team, highlighting progress, areas of concern, and any frequently asked questions that required follow-up.
The Training Lead developed a detailed plan for on-site support during the go-live phase. Multiple trainers were scheduled to be present on-site to handle questions, troubleshoot issues, and provide real-time support to staff as they transitioned to using SystmOne in their day-to-day operations.
Outcomes
The training programme delivered to St Luke’s Hospice was successfully executed within the contracted time frame, with a strong focus on tailored training materials, providing hands-on practice, and ensuring support during and after the go-live phase.
Integrating unit-specific processes into training materials and advising staff on how to best navigate functionality limitations prior to go live, helped ensure that staff were equipped to work within the system’s capabilities.
Regular reporting enabled timely adjustment to the training approach based on staff feedback, ensuring that issues were addressed promptly, and that training remained relevant and effective.
We also provided supplementary training for staff who were unavailable during the scheduled sessions, to ensure that no team member was left behind in the transition to SystmOne.
When the go-live date was postponed, the team adapted quickly by creating shorter refresher modules, helping staff retain familiarity without requiring full retraining.
The onsite floorwalking support covered two weeks, with clinical system specialists available for both the Inpatient and Outpatient areas concurrently. We were able to support staff with adjustments to working with SystmOne, pivot to support with process evolutions, and collaborate with the local clinical system teams.
This successful partnership demonstrates NECS’s capability to deliver tailored training solutions and seamless support, ensuring that organisations like St Luke’s Hospice can confidently transition to modern EPR systems and continue to provide exceptional care.
“The launch has gone really smoothly, thanks to all of the training, data migration and go-live support from the NECS team.”