Planned ASMS senior doctors' strike — Thursday 1 May, 24 hours
Patient safety is our priority. Our hospitals and emergency departments will remain open. Continue to attend all appointments on the day of the strike unless we have contacted you to reschedule.
Our Patient safety, quality and innovation (PSQI) team supports clinicians to provide safe care by providing expertise and experience to ensure patient harm is managed and that, systems and processes to support safe care delivery are in place.
Our focus is to provide quality and safe care to the population we serve. The functions of our team include the following.
We liaise with ACC to make sure all ACC patients receive the care and support they need in a timely manner.
All policies, procedures and guidelines are reviewed for accuracy and that they are evidence-based. The controlled document administrator makes sure all documents are current, and removes expired documents as notified.
We monitor and make sure Whanganui Hospital meets all legislated requirements, particularly those covered by Ngā Paerewa Health and disability services standards and others issued by standards NZ that are relevant to our services.
We also assist with accreditation and audit of various departments to meet national and international requirements.
Cgov is our risk, incident and consumer feedback management system. It is used to capture:
We values patient and consumer feedback, whether it is positive, negative or simply a suggestion. We use many methods for gathering patient feedback but one of the most useful tools is the insight and information we gain from dealing with patient complaints.
Patients have rights when accessing health or disability services which are described in the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers' Rights.
These service standards are what any one of us would expect if we were accessing a health or disability service in New Zealand. If you feel that one or more of your rights have been breached, you may make a complaint.
If you make a complain the Health NZ Whanganui customer relations and complaints coordinator will listen to your concerns, record the details and initiate a complaint investigation. Our complaints management process will be explained to you and you will be kept informed on the progress of your complaint.
Staff can lodge feedback using Cgov.
We are committed to providing and maintaining a safe environment for all our employees, patients, and visitors. Our robust programmes enable us to identify and remedy or minimise hazards. We encourage patients and visitors to let staff know if they see or experience a hazard that needs to be remedied.
We lead several Health Quality and Safety Commission projects (HQSC), including:
We also collate data for the Quality Safety Markers and report this to HQSC for National benchmarking.
We strive to provide safe care. However, sadly, there are times when the care does not meet expectations, and a patient is harmed in our care. Our hospital is no different to other hospitals, nationally or internationally, in this regard and is committed to reducing preventable patient harm. All incidents are taken seriously and are investigated to understand what happened, why it happened and to make a plan to address the findings.
To support this approach, we have developed systems and processes to enable electronic reporting of all incidents, investigation of all incidents and feedback to the patient, their families and to staff.
The process of feedback to the patient and their family after a serious harm incident is called 'open disclosure'. This is offered to all patients and their families with a copy of the report and the findings.
Infection is one of the 5 areas of high harm — nationally and internationally. With this in mind, we developed a robust infection control programme focusing on:
Hand hygiene is the most effective way to prevent the spread of infection. As staff, visitor or patient, you can play a key role in supporting the hospital to remain infection free by ensuring your hands are washed when entering the hospital.
Hospital-acquired infections are considered patient harm. When they do occur, we follow up to ensure we understand the cause and how we may be able to minimise occurrences in the future. There is a 'real time' hospital infection surveillance programme in place for patients having surgery. Training in infection control practices is provided to all staff to maintain knowledge and to support safe practice.
More information about hand hygiene is available on the Health Quality & Safety Commission website.
Hand hygiene — Health Quality & Safety Commission (external link)
We strive to provide safe care for patients and protect our staff from injury. Education is provided to staff on appropriate equipment and manual handling techniques.
We recognise that patients' health information is sensitive and must be handled with the utmost care.
This role ensures that the judicial services and Health NZ assist each other in fulfilling their obligations. Staff are supported with providing statements to the police for criminal matters and the police support Health NZ staff when dealing with aggression and criminal events. The police can request copies of patient's records but may require a formal statement using this template. Staff are to list their full name and qualifications and describe their involvement in the patient's care paying attention to any injuries sustained, the assessment undertaken, and the treatment given. Any medical abbreviations or terms are simplified so that those lay people attending court can understand the statement.
If staff need any assistance, please contact the clinical quality and risk advisor.
All research must meet organisational, professional, legal and ethical standards. Our research advisor makes sure the correct documentation is provided, and organisational approval is obtained.
We have an obligation to patients, staff, public and the Ministry of Health to manage risk effectively.
We monitor compliance with Australian/New Zealand Standard [AS/NZS ISO 31000: 2009] where appropriate, and are supported by the risk management procedure to make sure all relevant parties:
Our Family violence intervention team aims to prevent intentional injuries to children and adults in the Whanganui region by:
We are able to provide advice to colleagues and community organisations, schools, early childhood education centres, and any other groups needing information about Positive parenting, identification of family violence issues and what they can do about this.
We are all affected directly or indirectly. Family violence is everyone's business.
Assault and abuse (internal link)
An adverse event is an event with negative reactions or results that are unintended, unexpected or unplanned.
In practice, this is most often understood as an event which results in harm to a client.
We are expected to:
Patients and their whānau who have been involved in an event will be offered the opportunity to share their story as part of the review process. In turn, review findings and recommendations will be shared back to them.
We aim to improve safety by encouraging open and transparent reporting when something goes wrong.
Visit the Health Quality and Safety Commission website for more information.