Safety program leads to fewer patient falls in Southern NSW

23 August 2023

In collaboration with the Clinical Excellence Commission, the Southern NSW Local Health District, Safe Care Project has reduced the number of serious falls by 33% in the participating seven hospital wards. This important project has won the Chief Executives Award at the local health district's Excellence Awards.

The Safe Care project started in May 2022, with the CEC Applied Safety and Quality Program developing the capability that enabled team success. The local faculty was led by Southern NSW Local Health District Manager of Clinical Improvement Niccola Follett. The faculty facilitated learning across 12 months supporting the Safe Care teams with patient safety, quality improvement and team leadership concepts.

The Safe Care teams introduced two key safety elements:

• Intentional rounding - Purposeful and timely rounding is a best practice intervention to routinely meet patient care needs, ensure patient safety, decrease the occurrence of patient preventable events, and proactively address problems before they occur.
• Safety huddles - short team meetings at the start of every shift or during a shift, where staff raise any concerns they may have about a patient and highlight any risk factors and plan of care.

The CEC Older Persons' Patient Safety Program has a key element called the Comprehensive Care – Minimising harm model. The model incorporates these safety processes to deliver safe patient care.

Clinical Excellence Commission Director of Capability and Culture Karen Patterson warmly congratulated the team on this recognition of their outstanding work.

"It was multidisciplinary teams that led to the project's success and ultimately improved safety for patients in Southern NSW," Ms Patterson said.

"We know falls can be the cause of serious injury and even death for vulnerable patients, so it was really encouraging to collaborate with staff from Southern NSW and make real improvements in patient safety on their wards."

The project involved Nurse Unit Managers leading ward -based teams that included nurses, allied health staff, administration staff and health and security assistants. The teams updated patient safety resources to suit the local rural setting and learned from patient experience with weekly surveys.

Nineteen Safe Care project team members graduated in July from the local health district Applied Safety and Quality Program. Some will use the program towards university qualifications. Continuing Southern NSW Local Health District's good work, in September a second round of staff will focus on further safety improvements. This is part of the district's ongoing commitment to improving patient safety and care.

Left to right: Alison Broadbent – District Director Nursing, Midwifery and Clinical Governance, Niccola Follett – Manager Clinical improvement, Karen Patterson –, Director, Capability and Culture, CEC, Terry Clout – Deputy Board Chair SNSWHD.