By 31 December 2020, 80 of patients who surrender their own medications on admission to St Joseph Hospital will get their own medications checked at the point of discharge from the hospital.

This project identified and examined the systemic issues leading to the use of seclusion at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead. It implemented preventative strategies to reduce the use of seclusion, including multidisciplinary team care plans, staff education, daily intake and handover meetings, as well as supervision sessions for nursing and allied health staff.

Blacktown Hospital educated administration staff on the importance of maintaining accurate contact details in patient records. It also displayed signage in the emergency department to remind families and carers to include their contact details on the patient’s admission form.

MLHD identified an alternative option for iron replacement therapy and developed guidelines to deliver it in the community setting where clinically indicated, in collaboration with patients and carers.

This project developed a standardised capacity testing and guardianship application process for confused patients, with a multidisciplinary approach to support decision making in the hospital environment.

The structured interdisciplinary bedside rounds (SIBR) project involved a restructuring of the Medical Unit at Orange to allow care to be delivered via daily interdisciplinary patient and family-centred rounds delivered in plain English with collaborative care and goal planning involving patient, family and the multidisciplinary healthcare team.

CCLHD developed a new referral pathway and model of care, to improve access to mental health services in the community.

The Forensic Hospital made changes to its treatment and management plan, introduced the NSW Mental Health Care Plan and conducted staff and patient education on the value of developing a care plan in collaboration with consumers.

NSW Ambulance introduced a falls package to address the year-round problem of falls in people aged 65 and over in the community. It incorporated a new falls risk assessment, protocol, clinical pathway and screening tool for paramedics, as well as education materials for consumers and general practitioners.

This project implemented a new End of Life Care Plan at Concord Repatriation General Hospital, including end of life care guidelines, staff education and resources for families and carers.

Broken Hill Base Hospital implemented a streamlined discharge process, a discharge lounge and a Hospital in the Home service, to improve the flow of patients through the emergency department.

This project aims to enhance multidisciplinary teamwork in a rural hospital, by ensuring that acute ward and community health staff participate in care planning for admitted patients and improve the interface between the acute settings and community health services.

Murrumbidgee Local Health District developed a process to ensure all patients have a best possible medication history recorded on admission to hospital.

The I AM Project aims to implement a more sustainable and accurate screening process at Prince of Wales Hospital for patients who are malnourished, or at risk of malnutrition.

The Subjective, Objective, Assessment and Plan (SOAP) methodology was selected as a prescriptive documentation style for use in all nursing progress notes. Staff education and resources were provided to support the implementation of this methodology in clinical practice.

Shellharbour Hospital developed a model of care that provides engaging, therapeutic, recovery-orientated mental health services to consumers, their carers and families.

The Electronic Patient Journey Board is a highly visible interactive touch screen, able to feed data directly from the electronic medical record and patient administration system. It is designed to facilitate multidisciplinary handover meetings with information displayed in a highly visual medium with graphic icons and colour schemes to discretely share clinical, financial and demographic information.

Macksville Hospital developed a 24-month New Graduate Program for nursing staff that involved a 12-week intensive induction period, with clinical exposure and support over the course of the program.

Mirrabrook Mental Health Unit introduced a new policy to help nicotine-dependent consumers quit smoking during their inpatient stay. It was supported by staff training, nicotine replacement therapy and carbon monoxide monitoring.

The introduction of finger foods will potentially: increase the opportunity to encourage or enable self-feeding; improve quality of life; increase oral intake and promote weight stabilization while in hospital; and improve the nutritional intake of patients admitted to the dementia and delirium ward.

This project looks at how the tea-run to adult patients at Westmead Hospital in three wards can be improved to meet the nutritional and individual dietary needs of patients.

The Prince of Wales Hospital is redesigning its clinical pharmacist services to prioritise medication review for inpatients most at risk of medication harm and ensure appropriate documentation of medication reviews.

Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network identified inconsistent metabolic monitoring as a patient safety risk, and resourced a project team to address this issue. Patients prescribed psychotropic medications are at increased risk of physical health side effects such as metabolic syndrome. These risks can be identified through regular physical health checks, referred to as metabolic monitoring.

This project is designed to improve falls prevention in a medical ward in an acute care facility. It identifies the causes of inpatient falls to provide strategies in response.

RAPID is a collection of projects that were developed by staff at Shoalhaven Hospital to address a range of issues. These issues contributed to a delayed medical patient journey across three areas: limited bed access, aged care assessment team referral process, fragmented interdisciplinary communication.

The Paediatric Access Support Service (PASS) aims to transfer patients to and from Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network inpatient settings efficiently. This would reduce associated workload, and improve the patient and staff experience.

An auditing process at Sydney/Sydney Eye Hospital revealed that patients are not as involved as they could be during the routine bedside handover processes that occur between nursing shifts. A project was established to address this, and in doing so, improve the safety and satisfaction of the patient.

This program evaluates and re-invents St Vincent's Hospital’s weekly rapid discharge rounds model. This is carried out by introducing ward-level clinical leads and creating better documentation around discharge plans. The goal is to improve safe and timely patient discharges.

This project brings together patients, families, carers and healthcare staff to act as partners in care and treatment planning.

Wollongong Hospital implemented a program to optimise the pre-operative haemoglobin and iron stores of patients undergoing major elective colorectal, upper gastrointestinal tract and orthopaedic surgery. This will prevent avoidable blood transfusions and their complications, along the patient peri-operative journey.

Broken Hill Health Service in Far West Local Health District implemented the person-centred sunflower tool, to improve communication and build a rapport between staff, patients and carers.

Nepean Hospital provided patients in a trial ward with a template containing prompts, so they could deliver a handover of their healthcare journey once a day to nursing staff.

Sutherland Hospital implemented a new procurement process, to provide staff with efficient access to products that deliver safe patient care in the right place, at the right time.

Royal North Shore Hospital designed and implemented an efficient, patient-centred model of care in the transit lounge, which improved patient flow and satisfaction.

Sutherland Hospital Mental Health Rehabilitation Unit implemented new policies and processes for managing admissions, then educated staff on the changes.

Hunter New England Mental Health implemented a new screening tool and staff education to ensure patients with delirium are provided with the right care pathway.

This project addressed barriers experienced by nursing staff when using the malnutrition screening tool, by introducing staff education, streamlined education pathways and a cheat sheet for nursing staff.

MNCLHD introduced a number of solutions to improve the flow and patient journey through its Mental Health Acute Care Services.

This project conducted a review of the care delivered to patients admitted to the oncology and palliative care wards at Westmead Hospital. As a result, changes were implemented that aimed to improve the coordination of care, reduce length of stay and streamline the discharge process.

This project aims to reduce waiting times and improve the quality of care delivered to orthodontic patients at the Sydney Dental Hospital.

This project will implement a number of solutions to reduce clinical variability and length of stay in acute adult mental health inpatient units. These include a new model of care, new care coordination and discharge process, new patient flow and demand management systems, enhanced consumer engagement, and workforce review and development.

This project improved education and workflow processes around medication administration, to reduce instances where patients either don’t receive their medication or don’t have a documented reason as to why their medication was not administered.

Prince of Wales Hospital developed a communication pathway that reported incidental findings, unexpected findings and changes to provisional medical imaging reports back to the referring clinician within an agreed timeframe.

Blacktown Hospital implemented a number of processes to track the use and improve the storage of walking belts and sticks in the Stroke and Aged Care Ward.

This project reimagined the way hospital food is delivered to patients in public hospitals, using new workflow processes, menus, staff training and technology, while remaining inside the current budget footprint.

Mid North Coast Local Health District developed a clinical guideline that allows stable patients with specific diagnoses to have a direct bed-to-bed transfer from Kempsey District Hospital to Port Macquarie Base Hospital, with contingency plans for situations that may negatively impact the patient.

This project reviewed the admission pathway and model of care for admitted general medicine patients, and optimised the workforce structure to improve the delivery of safe, efficient and high-quality care.

Royal Prince Alfred Hospital implemented the first randomised controlled trial in the world that demonstrated the benefits of using an in-line speaking valve in an Intensive Care Unit, to restore the voice of mechanically-ventilated tracheostomy patients.

This project implemented a more effective method for cleaning dentures in hospital and delivered education session to staff and patients on the link between oral health and systemic infection.

This project developed nurse-led protocols for the insertion, removal and management of indwelling urinary catheters at John Hunter Hospital.

John Hunter Hospital implemented advanced computed tomography (CT) imaging, which allows patient profiling, prognostic accuracy and personalised acute stroke care.

This project aimed to improve the patient flow of restricted weight bearing (RWB) patients through the acute orthopaedic service, by implementing a reconditioning program that optimised recovery following surgery. Communication processes were also incorporated into the model of care, to keep patients informed and improve their experience.

Camden Hospital implemented a multidisciplinary review meeting (Safety Huddle) following all inpatient falls and near miss falls, which developed strategies in consultation with the patient to prevent the incident from reoccurring.

Royal North Shore Hospital redesigned the process of transferring information from the hospital to primary and community health services, including reintroducing a transfer of care risk screening tool and expanding the acute and post-acute care liaison role.

This project developed guidelines and resources to improve occupational therapist staff compliance with departmental protocols in place at Blacktown Mount Druitt Hospital.

This project provided a Coordinated Discharge Package, including a discharge summary and follow-up call, to patients discharged from Medical Assessment Units (MAUs) at Coffs Harbour Health Campus.

The APPLE project developed a new process to obtain and store Alternating Pressure Air Mattresses at Orange Health Service. Patients identified at ‘high risk’, those who have an existing pressure injury and/or those who are clinically indicated, are provided with pressure relieving equipment in a timely manner.

This project installed a patient safety board and innovation board to engage staff in the process and allow patients and visitors to see how clinical practice impacts on safety and quality.

This project developed an integrated model of care that facilitated early discharge from inpatient units and transferred care back to the community, with home-based treatments provided by an Acute Care Team.

Following results of a successful trial, the QASCIP implemented three clinical protocols to manage fever, hyperglycaemia and swallowing in stroke (the Fever, Sugar, Swallow (FeSS) clinical protocols). The Nursing Research Institute partnered with the ACI, 15 local health districts, clinicians and the National Stroke Foundation to implement the FeSS clinical protocols in all 36 NSW stroke services.

This project will audit the medical records of Australian Refined Diagnostic Reference Group G70 – Other Digestive System Disorders patients at Gosford Hospital to investigate the reasons for increasing length of stay and implement strategies to decrease this rate.

Essential to seamless transfer of care is the engagement of and communication with relevant clinicians from the inpatient and community settings, as well as the consumer or carer during discharge planning. This project has highlighted the real issues underlying care coordination, which have persisted and become more complex as local services have evolved. An objective analysis of these issues has occurred with focused strategies and an implementation plan that places the patient at the centre of care....

The Far West Mental Health Recovery Centre (FWMHRC) is public mental health admission facility to be operated in partnership with a Community Managed Organisation (CMO) in NSW. The FWMHRC is a 10-bed unit in the grounds of Broken Hill Health Service. It provides step-up step-down care to people requiring support to overcome mental ill health. The inclusion of the FWMHRC into the spectrum of integrated mental health and drug and alcohol programs in Far West NSW has solved a number...

The project aims to streamline the admission process to the two drug health wards. From admission, staff will work with the patient to develop a comprehensive care plan for their discharge back to the community, ensuring access to education and services to help keep them well. This will in turn reduce the number who are readmitted after relapse and help to keep people healthy in their community....