Ascension: OneNurse

The Ask: OneNurse started as part of an idea from a consultancy tasked with discovering the needs of our nurses. Ascension studio took over the product development work and I was tasked with handling the transition, taking over the design work, getting the product ready for launch, and identifying and designing feature improvements and the future of the tool.

My role: Lead designer on the OneNurse mobile application

Key Collaborators:

• Product Manager: Lionel Aguilar

• Architect: Chris Coy

• Vice President, NCOE: April Tinsley

• And of course the nurses

Skills Developed:

• Product Development Process - I grew as I worked closely onboarding a new product manager by defining and writing stories, collaborating on team quarterly and annual OKRs, managing a contract designer and aligning their needs/expectations with the needs of the team, generating a team mission and vision, and

• Design - I improved my skills at creating, improving, and managing a design system that works for designers and I trained the product team and developers how to use the tool (Figma).

• Stakeholder Management - I learned to manage leader/stakeholder relationships and expectations frequently through reporting on usage/adoption, holding design critiques, and presenting strategic goals.

OneNurse Strategy

OneNurse will eventually be a one-stop-shop for nurses at Ascension for everything they need outside of clinical care. That may sound like a lot, and it is. Our starting priorities were to create a schedule management tool, and a space to receive news and updates from Ascension, the NCOE, and the nurses local Ministries(markets).

The Scheduling feature of the app is why nurses will initially use the app. Before OneNurse nurses would have to go to their unit and often check either an excel file or a piece of paper to see when they were working.

News & Updates are often missed by nurses, most of their emails go unread. OneNurse aims to put the important information in their hands.

Figma Prototype

Upcoming features

A fair amount of research has gone into what the nurses would benefit from, and in our continued usability/discovery research sessions and feedback survey we have continued to gather feedback from the nurses. Not surprising but they want:

• Access to the information/resources that are hard to get to currently

• Improved control over their schedules

• Pathways to advance their career

Additional key features are missing form the app like allowing for push notifications, and syncing to a personal calendar. These and more will be added in the next 6 months.

Here are a select few ready for development which will be implemented soon.

Career Coach

The NCOE has a fantastic career coach team, I worked with their leadership and nurses to create the starting point for what will evolve into a more robust ‘Professional Development’ section in the app, but in the near term nurses will be able to connect with their local Career Coach, and book an appointment with them through the app.

Request Time Off

Nurses will soon be able to see their PTO balance, and request time off in the app. They can elect a day and select between PTO, SRDO (Scheduled Routine Day Off) or ROOC (Routine Off On Call). They are then notified when their manager approves the request.

Profile Improvements & View Timecard and Paychecks

Nurses work varied hours with different pay and bonus scructures, and with COVID this has gotten even more complicated with a significant increase in travel nurses. These features are highly requested and valuable to the non-salaried nurse.

Launched in November 2021

Since November we have provisioned nearly 33% of the nurses at Ascension with about 20% actively using the application to-date. That number continues to grow as we get more onto the app, we improve the existing features, add additional features, and as nurses learn about and use the application. Nurses are generally slow to adopt so this much growth in 6 months is very promising. By the end of August all of Ascensions nurses will have access to the app.

Usage Metrics (as of May 2022)

What’s Next?

There are many hurdles ahead for this application. We have had trouble with funding and staffing with some leadership wanting us to prove value to Ascension through the app. We continue to strive to bring nurses the resources, tools, and support they need. Today more than ever we need to do all we can to support nursing. Through improved tools, environment, culture, and doing far more than ‘what everyone else does’ we will provide a desirable working environment for nurses now and int he future. We just have to work together, make hard choices, and take some risks - betting on the future of nursing.

When I asked a nurse supervisor what the app could do to help her team, she said “don’t worry about an app, go get a degree in nursing and get a job as a nurse”

Oh… your still here, well ok

I love working with nurses and on this project, its in a unique position at Ascension. We have a studio with a standardized design system and most work is in the consumer/patient space. On OneNurse I have had control and freedom over the design system, incredible access to nurses who are my co-workers, a team that is dedicated to do and provide as much as they can too nurses.

Plus have you ever worked with a nurse? They’re fantastic, they work incredibly hard, they can squeeze so much into 5 min, they are scrappy and innovative and they get the job done. I feel incredibly blessed to work with them. If you ever chat with a nurse ask about a good code brown story, I’ve found most have one or two.

For fun here is an image of the design system I’ve been creating for the tool. I love using Figma and putting frames in frames in frames, and then components with variants and auto layout in other components.