Southern DHB Celebrates First Patient Safety Week!

Southern DHB Celebrates First Patient Safety Week!

Southern DHB continues to bring patient safety to the forefront as it celebrates the first ever “National Patient Safety Week” (3 – 9 November).

The national event is being co-ordinated by the Health Quality and Safety Commission (HQ&SC), and is intended to create focus, energy and momentum, and raise awareness of the importance of patient safety. In Southern, several activities will be held for staff and patients to help drive a focus on continuously improving patient safety. These include:

· Themed booths about Patient Safety Week– to be held at Dunedin (3rd November), Lakes (4th November), Southland (5th November), and Wakari Hospitals (10th November) for patients and staff to visit. The booths will be manned by staff who have been involved in patient safety initiatives to provide information to staff and patients. There will also be information on the latest Open for Better Care initiative - the Medication Safety Campaign (launched on 16th October). The booths will also provide staff with a chance to take a look at the new electronic risk management system (currently known as RL6) which is to be rolled out across Southern DHB from March next year.

· International Guest Speaker Dr Jim Bagian at Patient Safety Workshop. A large number of Southern DHB staff will be attending a HQ&SC coordinated workshop on the 7th November in Dunedin. The workshop is regionally focused (South Island wide) and has three broad themes: understanding the role of leaders in health care quality, organisational features that enable and support quality improvement and teamwork, and communication for quality. Dr Bagian is a US-based human factors expert who lists among his qualifications and achievements: astronaut, anaesthetist, engineer, mountaineer, snow-and-ice rescue techniques instructor, freefall parachutist, and pilot of propeller and jet aircraft, helicopters and gliders. He is currently Director of the Center for Healthcare Engineering and Patient Safety at the University of Michigan.

· Patient Experience Survey Results - this week will see the first public release of the findings of the National Patient Experience Survey (4th November). The survey scores each DHB with a mark out of 10 for following categories: communication, partnership, co-ordination, physical and emotional needs. The survey has been coordinated by the HQ&SC.

Director of Quality, Tina Gilbertson said that the week provided an exciting opportunity for the whole DHB to continue its focus on patient safety: “At Southern DHB staff are working hard all year round to provide the best and safest care possible, for every patient, every time. Patient Safety Week provides an excellent opportunity to help build on that work.”

The efforts underway at Southern DHB to improve patient safety have led to good outcomes for the DHB in terms of patient safety and experience of care over the last few quarters. For example in the last quarter results for Southern:

· The audit results show that we have increased our practice of 5 moments of hand hygiene whenever a patient is cared for to 75 percent. This is a 16% increase in one year which is a great result.

· Southern’s surgical teams correctly use the World Health Organization’s surgical safety checklist and the documentation is completed 95 percent of the time. The checklist reduces the risk of errors before, during or after an operation.

· ICU staff correctly used an insertion bundle, to reduce risk of CLAB (central line associated infections relating to insertion of the line) 98 percent of the time – and staff have recently celebrated 1,000 CLAD free days at Dunedin ICU.

Southern DHB is currently part of a South Island wide initiative to improve the recording and reporting of incidents feedback and other risk to safety, through the development of an electronic, integrated risk management system (RL6). The system has been purchased by the DHBs as part of the South Island Alliance. All South Island DHBS are working together to coordinate its introduction and roll out in late 2014/early 2015. Southern is scheduled to roll out the new system from March next year.

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