In the last week of June, a group from Safer Care Victoria (SCV) attended the Learning Improvement Science (LISN) at Northern Health program. The participants were a mix of Clinical Fellows completing a one-year fellowship through SCV on improvement projects, and other various staff from SCV.

Northern Health currently offer the program to all internal staff interested in learning and developing skills in improvement science. It is also offered to external health services as a professional development day. The day is facilitated by the Northern Health Transformation Unit, alongside an improvement expert from The Royal Children’s Hospital, Simon Lane.

Part of the day for the SCV staff included a tour of the Ideas Lab located on level 3 of NCHER, and learning about other innovation work Northern Health is involved in, including Better @ Home and the Big Idea initiatives. A number of the SCV fellows are partnering with Northern Health staff on improvement projects, and took the opportunity to do a site visit including the pharmacy and maternity unit.

Feedback provided by SCV staff has been extremely positive. Ma’ayan Geffen, Clinical Fellow from SCV, said, “I left feeling really energised and excited about implementing what I had learnt into practice. I will definitely share my experience with colleagues and recommend the program to others.”

“LISN is an Action Learning Workshop built around a simulation of the Day Procedure Unit (DPU), where multiple improvement cycles are conducted to improve patients’ clinical outcomes and access, reduce documentation errors, while at the same time improving efficiency,” explains Laura Hughes, Workshop Facilitator and Project Manager.

The theoretical concepts taught throughout the day include identification of waste in a system, built in quality, standard daily work, levelling, continuous flow, pull systems and 5S.

“This action learning approach assists participants to explore and question their assumptions about what is required to improve performance of a care delivery system, see waste in a system, and enables staff to make small changes that can have system level benefits,” Laura added.

If you are interested in attending a LISN workshop day, please contact lisn.hro@nh.org.au.

Dates for the remainder of 2022 are: 8 August, 6 September, 4 October and 13 December.