Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust Digitised Pain Management with Medicus
Sheffield Children's Hospital
Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust is one of only four dedicated children’s hospital trusts in England, providing specialist care across Sheffield, South Yorkshire, and beyond. As one of Medicus’ earliest adopters, Sheffield’s Pain Service has built a secure, fully digital system that supports meaningful, auditable patient care across some of the most clinically complex paediatric cases in the region.
Previous Challenges
- Paper handover sheets filed in folders with no access controls, audit trail or long-term retention
- Records routinely destroyed for security reasons, making clinical history for returning patients unrecoverable
- Information circulating in printed form across clinical areas
- Data was not stored in patient notes, meaning it was not easily accessible to the wider clinical team and MDT
- Limited audit trail or reporting capability.
Solutions from Medicus
- Secure centralised storage with role-based access controls and a complete, governed audit trail
- Stopped handwritten or printed patient-identifiable documentation across the service
- Direct EPR integration uploading structured pain team assessments into the Trust’s electronic notes
- Longitudinal patient record retaining analgesia history, contacts and review frequency for as long as clinically needed
- Reporting tools such as Superquery is enabling faster, on-demand clinical reporting replacing manual folder searches.
Results
- Patient data held securely in a governed system, no longer at risk of loss, destruction or unauthorised access
- Achieved near-zero paper-based data capture and printing, enabling safer long-term information retention
- Complete audit trail for all clinical activity and data access
- Clinical histories instantly accessible electronically via patients notes at the point of care, including for returning patients and pre-operative assessments
- On-demand activity reporting in minutes, replacing manual estimation from paper folders.
13+ years
95%+
Customer Feedback
Modernising Paediatric Pain Management with Medicus
For years, Sheffield Children’s Hospital Pain Service relied on handwritten paper audit sheets stored in l folders. Reports were completed daily and stored in the patient recovery area. These were routinely destroyed because retaining unsecured, patient-identifiable data is not safe. This meant there was no reliable information for returning patients, or an easily accessible record of what had been prescribed previously, how effective it was and if there were significant side effects.
As Rebecca Reaney, Lead Pain Nurse, recalls:
“Clinicians would try to piece together a patient’s history, but if it hadn’t been written into their hospital notes, the information was gone.”
Medicus resolved this by replacing paper-based capture with a governed digital system offering controlled access, a full audit trail and no need to print. Pain assessments now upload directly into the Trust's EPR, giving authorised clinicians immediate access to analgesic histories, adverse reactions and previous review dates at the point of care. Governance and audit queries that once required folder-by-folder estimation, are now answered in minutes through Superquery reporting.
Seamless Reporting Through Hospital Systems Integration
A significant operational step forward has been the integration between their hospital systems and Medicus. When a patient is added to the system via their PAS information; that event flows automatically into Medicus in real time. The patient’s acute analgesic intervention techniques are reflected within Medicus from the moment it begins.
The result is a seamless, end-to-end audit trails panning both the theatre pathway and pain management pathway within a single platform. Activity data, clinical contacts and outcome information are consistent and complete without additional administrative effort. Medicus becomes the single point of truth for pain management data, connected to live patient flow and aligned with the joined-up reporting that NHS governance and commissioning require.
A Partnership Built on Trusted Collaboration
Across more than 13 years of use, the Sheffield Paediatric Pain Service has found the Mela support team responsive and dependable. Whether troubleshooting a query or building a custom Superquery report, help has always been available quickly, either resolving the issue immediately or following up.
In Spring 2026, Mela is aiming to launch a series of short CPD-style webinar sessions including Superquery masterclasses delivered by industry experts, giving Medicus users a practical route to their use of the platform’s analytical capabilities.
Looking to streamline your clinical reporting and auditing? Explore how Medicus workflows can help your team work smarter and delivery better patient outcomes.
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