Broadmeadows Hospital Unit 1 Comprehensive Unit-Based Safety Program (CUSP), a key component of our HRO Trusted Care transformation, celebrated six months since it started in June 2019.

CUSP is a safety culture program designed to improve awareness about patient safety and build clinical practice. The program aims to build clinical teams as centres of local knowledge, sharing expertise from all quarters of the local clinical community. The regular CUSP meetings reflect on ward-based safety issues, with a multidisciplinary approach to reducing rates of harm and improving the delivery of patient care.

Dr Louise Monk, Geriatrician and Clinical Lead at Broadmeadows Hospital, said the CUSP first started at Northern Hospital and soon after it was identified that Broadmeadows Hospital would benefit from a meeting of this nature.

“Unit 1 is a very busy ward, with many patients being admitted every day. As such, we felt it would be the perfect unit to start a CUSP at this site,” said Louise.

“This is the first CUSP at Broadmeadows Hospital, and we would like to extend it to other units in the future. Since we started six months ago, I have noticed how these meetings have opened lines of communication and introduced a place where people can bring up any issues and an action plan can be formulated straight away,” she said.

All members of the multidisciplinary team are invited to attend the meetings, providing a collaborative approach to problem solving. All experiences and perspectives are heard, and the CUSP begins to identify defects in the system and how these might be remedied. Importantly, clinical leaders get to observe unit-based activity for themselves — they listen to local points of view and tend to apply their observations.

Grant Taylor, Site Director of Nursing and Operations, said the centrepiece of the CUSP model is communication and the way the multidisciplinary team setting reinforces engagement at all levels of the clinical setting.

“The CUSP has engaged staff in a critical way. It’s made us look more closely at technical and behavioural aspects of our work,” said Grant.

“I think the CUSP meetings have enhanced the team atmosphere on the ward and empowered all team members to be involved in improving the quality of care we deliver,” added Louise. “The meetings also provide a solid forum for the Unit 1 team to work towards longer term goals for some of the bigger challenges we face.”

Clare McCarthy, Project Manager, explained how the CUSP framework is being embedded at Northern Health as part of the dynamic activity of our wider HRO endeavour.  “After just six months, the Unit 1 team at Broadmeadows Hospital is already proving the value of the CUSP model to embrace issues of safety and culture that affect the whole organisation. This is something really worth celebrating,” said Clare.

The Broadmeadows Hospital CUSP is now one of eight multidisciplinary CUSPs across Northern Health.