At the end of November, our Emergency Department (ED) held their ‘Research and Quality Presentation Day’ via MS Teams. This forum provided an opportunity for ED staff to present some of the research projects and quality initiatives they have been involved with over the course of the year, as well as present some future projects that will be conducted next year.

Dr Kirin Channa, ED Quality Lead, said the idea came from a hospital in Brisbane where she used to work when she was a registrar, where all the senior registrars had an opportunity to do an audit and present. She thought it would be great to have something similar at Northern.

“The registrars have been coming to me individually, expressing interest in getting involved with quality improvement initiatives and audits. When it comes to research, they were approaching Dr Nancy Sadka to find out how to get involved,” she explained.

The more formal registrar audit program started this year, where registrars can use some of their paid teaching sessions to do quality improvement projects, and most of them are doing audits.

“We now have a database of the audits that are being conducted and the consultants who are supervising them. Given that there is so much great work going on, not just with the registrars, but across the Emergency Department, we decided to have a dedicated day to showcase all this work,” she explained.

The initial idea was to have poster presentations in person, but due to COVID-19, the presentation day was held via MS Teams and was open to staff from other departments as well, with great attendance.

“The best thing about the day is not to just showcase the great work that has been done, but also generate a really good discussion on the projects and new ideas that were brought forward. The day really highlighted that quality and safety is key to what we do here as clinicians,” she said.

The day included voting for the ‘Best Project’ – and the two winners were: ‘Snake Bite Protocol’ by Tyson McLeod, Emergency Nurse and ‘PRADAA’ Study by Dr Joe Rotella.

“The snake bite protocol is an initiative targeted at improving the timely care of patients presenting to the Emergency Department with potential snake bites. It involved both formalised policy changes, as well as the rollout of emergency snake bite kits, containing everything you need to manage a potential snake bite in the ED. The kits contain QR scan codes for ease of access on how to use the kits and have since received state-wide interest. This has lead to further education rollouts on our LMS regarding the patient assessment of this cohort of patients,” Tyson explained.

Tyson chose to pursue snake bite management quality improvement due to his personal interest of the great outdoors.

“While I don’t personally have a pet snake, I have had numerous encounters with them in the outdoors and have always had a great respect for them and nature itself,” he added.

The research and physical rollout of the snake bite protocol has been widely well received by nursing and medical staff alike. It not only provides quick and easy education staff, but also improves our patients timely access to critical care. The protocol will be re-reviewed in the third quarter of 2021, to see how we can further improve on these interventions.

Dr Joe Rotella explained the PRADAA Study plans to examine the ‘safety and efficacy of PRomethazine And Droperidol for the sedation of Acutely Agitated patients in the Emergency Department’.

“We plan to conduct a single site, randomised, double-blinded placebo-controlled trial comparing droperidol (the most commonly used drug in the ED for acutely agitated patients) and a placebo against a novel combination of droperidol and promethazine (a sedating antihistamine),” he explained.

Dr Megan Robb, Director of Emergency Department added: “This is a fantastic initiative to highlight all the great work that is occurring in the Emergency Department. I am very proud of the team for their dedication and all their hard work to ensure our patients get quality and safe care.”

Featured image (left to right): Joe Rotella, Kirin Channa, Tyson McLeod.