It’s the start of a new era: A majority of nurses at the Jewish General Hospital University Health Centre are now recording patients’ vital signs in the Connected Health Record (CHR), a step that improves patient safety and leaves more time for bedside care.
For many of them, this means that with the push of a button, information on vitals can be automatically sent from a bedside monitor into the CHR.
The CHR has completed a critical phase of its rollout with the implementation of the innovative Vital Signs module in the Emergency Department in August. Since launching in March with only 40 nurses, it has now expanded to more than 1,000.
“The ease of entering vital signs, and being able to access them, is really important for patient care,” Meg Hoodspith, a Clinical Activities Specialist in the ED, said as her department logged onto Vital Signs on August 18. “It can be a quick change in vital signs that gets you from a non-monitored section to a resuscitation bed.”
The integration of Vital Signs in the ED sets another major benchmark for the CHR—the revolutionary tool that records, retrieves and shares health information across the Santé Québec West-Central Montreal Health and Social Services University Network. The system’s first module was the Patient Timeline, which was launched in the fall of 2023 and allowed medical staff to view up-to-date information about patients through a single, unified digital platform.
Vital Signs, the second module, marks a significant step: Nurses not only helped design it to meet clinical needs; they now also use it every day to record bedside essentials such as such as blood pressure, temperature and heart rate.
The move from recording vital signs on paper to automatically capturing them through a bedside monitor and populating them directly into the CHR is saving nurses valuable time that can be redirected to what matters most: spending more time with their patients.
“Not only have we achieved biomedical device connectivity with our bedside vital signs monitors, but we have also crossed a significant milestone,” says Dr. Justin Cross, Chief Digital Health Officer. “This is the first CHR module where staff are entering data directly into the system.”
This has a notable impact on the day-to-day clinical routines for nursing teams, some of whom are recording vitals digitally for the first time. Coralie Adam, a Nurse Clinician in Family Medicine, admits she was apprehensive when the module went live on her unit in April. Previously, she recorded vitals down by hand on paper. “I was a little reticent about the change,” she says.
But her worries vanished thanks to a trainer who was patient and answered all of her questions. “Everything was well-organized and clearly explained,” she says.
Now, Ms. Adam enters vital signs into one of the computer terminals at the nursing station or elsewhere on the unit; at the same time, she’s able to consult patients’ charts on a single platform in the CHR to find the latest information about lab results, imaging or other data.
“This lets us spend more time with at the bedside with patients.”
Coralie Adam, Nurse Clinician
Dat Nguyen, also a Nurse Clinician in Family Medicine, finds benefits in consulting patient charts on the CHR as well. “It allows me to check everything and get the whole picture for a patient. With the CHR, everything is there in one place, so it’s quicker. I can use my extra time on patient care.”
Vital Signs reduces human errors that can occur when data is written by hand and is hard to decipher. “There are fewer possible mistakes, less confusion, and it’s all clearer,” he says.
The successful adoption of the Vital Signs module extends beyond nursing teams, with physicians, residents, and medical students now using it during rounds to access patient information. Its rollout will continue across the hospital, in smaller phases, supporting a smooth transition to the new module. Building on this momentum, the next module is expected to be implemented this fall.