Emergency Department Management

The processes that take place in the Emergency Department are critical for any hospital. Reducing wait times and creating a positive experience are important indexes of patient satisfaction. Inefficient methods can result in lost revenues and poor community image, as well as concern over patient safety. The Emergency Department (ED) is often a patient’s first experience with the hospital, thus refining the ED’s efficiencies is vital to both customer satisfaction and the overall hospital business case.

Improving patient flow and reducing access block and waiting times, while simultaneously enhancing patient and staff satisfaction are challenges that all emergency departments aim to combat, the conference agenda will provide a platform for looking at; revising and strengthening models of care, supporting IT structures, funding in the ED, hospital avoidance strategies and staff training and retention in light of change management.

While having clearly defined boundaries in one sense, the emergency department also involves a number of other hospital departments thus cross-functional change management is a crucial element of any major change initiative involving the ED. The perennial challenge of creating efficient patient transfer from the ED to other inpatient wards will be touched on, as will managing the change processes in implementing projects across the board.

The 4^th Annual Emergency Department Management Conference will be the only event in Australia to look solely at raising discussion around emergency department management systems and showcasing innovative models of service delivery from the coal face.

The key topics that will be discussed at this Conference are:

• Four Hour Rule
• Improving patient flow
• Working With Allied Health Services
• Working with diagnostic staff – radiology in the ED
• Geriatric Care in the ED
• ED avoidance strategies – HITH
• Dealing with frequent flyers
• Staff management
• Technology in the ED
• Funding and business in the ED

Please visit 4^th Annual Emergency Department Management Conference website if you’d like more information.

Managing patient confidentiality and its challenges

We had the opportunity to talk to Brooke Whiteside, Health Information Manager for Southern Health before she speaks at the 2nd Annual Managing Patient Confidentiality & Information Governance Conference on the 25th and 26th June in Melbourne.

We asked:

1. Can you give us a brief update on the operational challenges of collecting sufficient data, and how do you overcome these challenges, including the lessons learnt during the process?

2. What are the key benefits that your staff and patients will see as a result of the successful implementation of a new database for tracking and reporting?

3. How do you ensure the effective communication and engagement between clinicians and other stakeholders during the process?

4. You’re speaking at IIR’s 2nd Annual Managing Patient Confidentiality & Information Governance Conference taking place on 25th and 26th June in Melbourne; what would you like delegates to gain from your presentation?

Your comments are most welcome!

Psychosis treatment makes light work of weighty side effects

Jackie Curtis will be speaking at the 3rd annual Mental Health Units Conference 2012 on the 21-22 June in Sydney.

*  *  *

WHEN Julio De Le Torre awoke in hospital to be told he had suffered a psychotic episode and been diagnosed with bipolar disorder he was terrified.

But then things were compounded further when the medication he needed brought with it a crushing side effect – within six months he had gained 20 kilograms.

“It was a very, very dark moment in my life. It was like having a double illness, both physical and mental,” he said.
Advertisement: Story continues below

But Mr De Le Torre, who was 21 and studying aerospace engineering at the University of NSW when he became sick two years ago, was lucky to have the help of a radical new treatment regime developed by doctors at the Early Psychosis Program at Bondi.

The regime, which has been implemented across the state and will soon run in Britain, could be a key to tackling the high number of patients who will die early deaths linked to weight-related problems.

For Mr De Le Torre, it has meant a return to a healthy life.

As well as losing the 20 kilograms in three months, he has managed to finish his degree and is pursuing a career in engineering. “I feel like a normal person now,” he said.

About one in 200 Australians are treated for psychosis in any month, and it tends to hit people in their late teens or early adulthood. Modern antipsychotic drugs save lives but the side effects can include serious weight gain and metabolic problems, potential contributors to the 20 per cent reduction in life expectancy of people with psychosis.

Someone with schizophrenia is 10 times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than suicide, according to Jackie Curtis, the clinical leader at the Bondi centre.

“Think of the amount of time we spend on suicide prevention and compare it to what we spend on this,” she said.

As well as providing exercise and diet advice, young patients can be given drug treatments such as the diabetes drug metformin or cholesterol-treating statins more commonly associated with much older people.

Dr Curtis believes in future psychiatrists might automatically prescribe metformin when they put patients on antipsychotics.

“We know the first 12 months of treatment for a young person who was previously not exposed to the medications is the greatest period of weight gain,” she said. “Imagine putting on 20kgs in that period of time.”

The program, outlined in the journal Early Intervention in Psychiatry this week, was developed by a team from the Bondi centre, the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, St Vincent’s Hospital and the University of NSW.

Dr Curtis said she hoped to do further research to identify whether it also improved the psychiatric outcomes of the participants.

Article taken from Sydney Morning Herald. 

Productive Ward Conference 2011

In conjunction with the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, we’d like to present The Productive Ward Conference 2011.

This conference has been born out of the feedback of several of our health events. The Productive Ward Series and Programme has been developed in the UK by the National Health Service and has been rolled out throughout the UK and off the back of their success sold and implemented in NZ and Canada. Here in Australia – the Productive Ward is producing significant results in hospitals as well.

The idea of the productive ward programme is to create a system on the ward which drives improvement in freeing up nurses so more time can be devoted to delivering high quality patient care.

The Productive Ward is program is delivering a highly successful & innovative solution for delivering safe & high quality care to patients across all clinical areas. It defines how ward processes and the physical environment of the ward can impact on the amount of time nurses have available for direct patient care.

In a first for an A Division health event we are branding the event in conjunction with the NHS due to the NHS trademark on The Productive Ward – Releasing Time to Care™ we are acknowledging them in our conference title. This is actually very beneficial for us and adds a lot of weight and reputation to this first time event.

We have the Australasian representative from the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement Anthea Penny (based in NZ) presenting a keynote address and an interactive workshop (to be included as part of the conference program)

*****************

For more information on the this conference, please go to www.iir.com.au/ward

Join in on the conversation on Twitter @iirhealthcare with #healthward and Linkedin in our IIR’s Acute Healthcare Community