In the lead up to Accreditation, Northern Health will focus on two Standards each week. You will hear from the Chairs of each Standard Committee on what you need to know.

Today, we speak with Jen Gilham, Divisional Director, Emergency Services & Access, about Standard 6: Communicating for Safety.

What is this standard about?

Standard 6 is all about ensuring we have systems in place to support effective communication with patients, carers and families, to ensure coordinated, safe care. The main areas this standard covers are:

1. Clinical governance and quality improvement to support effective communication
2. Correct patient identification and procedure matching
3. Clinical handover
4. Communicating critical information
5. Documentation of information

This standard recognises that effective communication is needed throughout patients’ care and identifies high-risk times when effective communication is critical. We aim to ensure that the patient is provided with timely, purpose-driven and effective communication and documentation that support continuous, coordinated and safe care for patients.

At Northern Health, this standard looks like….

Some examples:

• Checking patients 3 points of identification
• Processes are in place to correctly match patients with their intended care, to ensure that the right patient receives the right care.
• Bedside nurse handover between at change of shifts
• ISBAR Handover between clinicians at points of transfer of care (ward to ward, etc)
• Identifying and acting upon new critical information about your patient, for example, changes to medication, new critical results of diagnostics, allergies, change inpatient goals of care

What are the top 5 ways staff can be prepared for Accreditation against this Standard?

• Have a think about what the term ‘critical information’ means for your area.
• Ensure your patients have access to bedside patient communication boards.
• Ensure you are involving patients and carers in decision making – via effective communication.
• Include your patient in handover, ask what is important for them today.
• Ensure your team are handing over the right information for each patient.
• Ensure handover sheets are not left in public areas.

What are the top 5 questions staff need to be able to answer about this Standard?

• What types of information is considered critical information in your area?
• How do you ensure patients are able to engage in their care and decision making?
• What processes do you use to ensure you are identifying the patient correctly?
• What processes do you use to ensure you are performing the right procedure on the right patient?
• Are you ensuring your handovers are done in ISBAR format?
• What information do you document in the patient healthcare records?

Is there anything else you would like staff to know about this Standard?

Standard 6 has been focusing on supporting clinicians in defining ‘critical information’.

Critical information can be something that is known (i.e. alerts/allergies), it could be something that is new information (i.e. patient mentions it at some point in their care), or it could be something that we actively seek out such as identifying risks within iView of EMR or the relevant paper based documents, or asking specific questions.

When new critical information arises, it should be addressed as soon as possible via appropriate clinical action. We also acknowledge that critical information looks different in each setting. The below Fact Sheet has been developed to assist.