Providing world-class clinical care where patient safety comes first is a key priority for NSW Health. NSW Health has a shared vision that patient safety is everybody’s business. This award acknowledges a commitment to putting Patient Safety First every day.
Projects within this category will display Patient Safety First in:
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Transcript: NSW Telestroke Service
The NSW Telestroke Service saves lives and reduces disability for stroke patients in rural and regional NSW.
Telestroke is a virtual care initiative providing access to ground-breaking time-critical treatments previously limited or unavailable due to geographical barriers.
Telestroke connects local Emergency Department clinicians to stroke specialists and is available 24/7 via video consultations.
Patients receive treatment closer to home and are only transferred if they need more complex treatment.
Additionally, advanced brain imaging and unified communications technology enables Telestroke specialists to support local clinicians to deliver advanced stroke treatments.
This project supports the NSW Health Future Health Strategy by providing world class clinical care, where patient safety is the number one priority.
Transcript: NSW Health Pathology’s Akuna electronic specimen tracking program team
Treating every person, pathology specimen and result with utmost care is at the heart of everything NSW Health Pathology does.
Having formed as a statewide service 10 years ago, NSW Health Pathology inherited disparate specimen management processes and platforms that couldn’t deliver the exceptional performance the organisation aspires to.
Consequently, the NSW Health Pathology team designed and built its own innovative system – Akuna – to standardise processes and electronically track specimens in real time. Its capabilities are beyond anything else available in Australia.
Electronically tracking (in real time) each sample from collection through transport and into the lab for testing and clinical reporting is ground-breaking.
A lost specimen, whether it can be replaced or not, causes additional stress, delay and risk to patients and our staff.
Akuna ensures staff have the ability to identify, react and resolve issues easier and earlier, so patients get the results they need sooner.
This innovative system showcases NSW Health Pathology as a leader in quality improvement to ensure safer patient care.
Akuna is a rare project meeting almost all Future Health Priorities.
It’s an investment in patient safety that uses digital technology to enhance service delivery.
It also supports NSW Health Pathology staff and is a great example of a sustainable, value-based health initiative that prioritises collaboration and outcomes.
Transcript: Reducing the risk of cardiac arrest in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit
Cardiac arrest occurs in 2-6% of children admitted to a paediatric intensive care units (PICU), and survival to hospital discharge is less than 50%.
Infants and children with congenital heart disease (CHD) have a ten-fold higher risk of cardiac arrest than children without congenital heart disease.
The development of a strategy to predict and prevent in-hospital cardiac arrest in children CHD will save lives. And so the goal was established to reduce the rate of cardiac arrest events in cardiac patients in PICU by 25% by January 2022.
Analysis of local cardiac arrest data trends identified common characteristics associated with arrest events in children with CHD. A Cardiac Arrest Risk Assessment Tool (CARAT) was developed by a multidisciplinary team.
Following a 3- month period of education the tool was piloted and feedback from staff and parents led to imperative changes to the tool using the Plan Do Study Act principles (PDSA).
Identification of children with CHD at high risk of cardiac arrest and the implementation of mitigation strategies for arrest prevention has also resulted in a reduction in cardiac arrest events in PICU.
A 77% reduction in cardiac arrest events in cardiac patients admitted to PICU over 12 months.