Comprehensive Care – Minimising Harm

The Older Persons' Patient Safety program has developed a safety model Comprehensive Care – Minimising Harm, which puts the focus on how we safely care for older people in hospital especially those with frailty, cognitive impairment and decreased mobility. The model ensures patient, family and carer experiences and outcomes are at the centre of our clinical care.

There will be a shift to identifying individual patient risk factors and implementing patient focused interventions (fall and pressure injury risks have been included in the model as component of safe care).

It incorporates team safety fundamentals and clinical care actions that address patient fundamental care needs. It is anticipated that through improved focus on minimising harm there will be overtime a reduction in hospital acquired complications such as falls, pressure injury, delirium, malnutrition and infection (urinary tract infection and pneumonia).

There is an emphasis on quality improvement for older persons' safety and a web-based toolkit to guide commencing a Quality Improvement (QI) initiative.