Resources

We all understand that the essential role of patient experience in achieving successful healthcare delivery. Or do we? This article argues that really understanding the patient experience in such a way that it drives organisation-wide improvement,  requires a comprehensive view that captures the full range of interactions across a health service organisation, beyond completing a survey.

The importance of a safety culture, incorporating psychological safety and encouraging people to speak up, has been identified as critical to safe care for some time. However, achieving and maintaining such an environment can be challenging. This metasynthesis examines 15 studies to “review and synthesise qualitative research on nurses' experiences of speaking up”. 

Consumer-directed care, consumer-centred care, consumer-focused care - whatever terms are used in your sector - remains a work in progress across human services.  Some sectors have embraced and refined their approach to consumer decision-making and partnerships over many years; for others it remains a current challenge.  Aged care, in particular, demonstrates some unique barriers to partnering with consumers in their care, as highlighted by this systematic review which examined the evidence relating to consumer-directed care (CDC) in the aged care environment.  

In this webinar, Beverley Sutton (CEO of HEAL and AICG) will take a look at what is likely to impact care in 2025 and what you will need to do to support your staff to get the best from their professional development opportunities to improve patient outcomes.

In healthcare, keeping the people who are receiving care safe is not the responsibility of just one person, team, or department. It’s also not just the responsibility of those delivering the care—it falls on all of us. Whether you’re in leadership, at the point-of-care, or supporting the care process behind the scenes, you have a role to play in ensuring that the people being cared for in your organisation are safe.

Clinical deterioration is a key risk for any organisation providing clinical care. This qualitative study investigates how three organisational influences - leadership, culture and hierarchies -  impact healthcare professionals' readiness to raise concerns about patient deterioration. 

Over the past three decades, many health systems have sought to enhance care delivery. Despite various approaches such as quality improvement and lean management these efforts can fall short. Failures are often attributed to leaders and workers not doing the right things. This article argues that the real quality problems lie in the underlying systems staff work with. It says that human service organisations will be more successful if they focus on designing systems that support the delivery of high-quality care, rather than trying to fix the people working within them.

‘Safety culture is like a garden: to bloom, it must be planned, planted and  tended.’ This is a key message from a systematic review of safety culture and an excellent reminder that culture is never ‘set and forget’.

Variation in healthcare quality is an ongoing issue. This study seeks to understand how differences in hospital practices and policies can lead to disparities in consumer outcomes and overall care quality. The authors compared process and outcome measures to detect variation and characteristics of hospitals with lower variation.

In this webinar, Sarah Fischer, Director of Culture & Capability at Safer Care Victoria discussed the elements that make up a safety culture; the steps to safety culture maturation, the signs that indicate success and how culture is influenced at a local level.