Adj Prof Jackie Hanson, Chief Executive

Yesterday the Metro North senior executive team (SET) held our monthly meeting at TPCH and took the opportunity to meet with staff and listen to your thoughts and ideas. Thank you to everyone who came along. We will be holding the SET meeting at a different facility each month so we can chat with staff and listen to feedback. Keep an eye out for when we’re at your location.

Have Your Say staff survey

Thank you to everyone who tuned in to my vidcast on Monday with our Chief People and Culture Officer Kristal Lowe to talk about the Metro North Have Your Say staff survey results. If you weren’t able to watch the vidcast live, the recording is now on QHEPS.

Interestingly, the survey found that our level of engagement with the survey is on a par or slightly above the benchmark for similar organisations. While there are many positives that are reflected in the survey, we did find that the common reasons people list for leaving their roles are workload and lack of career development or opportunities for progression. We are working on these, but we also welcome feedback on what development programs you might like Metro North to develop.

The Have Your Say reports are now available and have recently been provided to the leadership teams of our directorates and facilities for distribution down through the service line leaders. For work units with five or more responses, you should be receiving your results over the coming weeks but if you have not yet seen yours, please discuss this with your direct manager. To ensure we get the most out of the survey, I ask manager to spend some time reviewing your team results and share them with your teams. We want to celebrate the successes and make a plan for addressing any emerging theme for improvement.

The People and Culture team are available to support managers to do this piece of work (if you are a manager who didn’t receive the Managers Memo last week with information about support available and the Manager Toolkit, please contact your People and Culture partner). There will also be a vidcast for line managers in the next few weeks to help you with identifying what to focus on in the report, sharing and communicating the results with your team, preparing to take action, and taking care of yourself and your team during this process.

Team members should also take the time to discuss your team’s results and be prepared for constructive conversations about what to do with the information to continue improving our workplace culture. I also want to remind everyone that the survey is not a mechanism for workplace complaints against individuals – there are appropriate channels in place already.

As part of the survey, we also randomly selected one team who achieved 100% completion from each directorate for $300 toward a team building activity. The winning teams are:

• Clinical Governance, Safety, Quality & Risk Units (inc NI Support Program)
• Workplace Relations
• Language Services
• MN Public Health Unit Management
• Legal Services
• STARS Support Services line managers & Coordinators
• Digital Metro North other
• Strategic Assets & Infrastructure Management
• Metro North Mental Health Redcliffe-Caboolture CAMHT
• Community & Oral Health GP Pine Rivers
• The Prince Charles Hospital Admin management
• Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital Cancer Care Services Radiation Therapy Leadership
• Redcliffe Hospital Health Information
• Caboolture Hospital Nursing and Midwifery Navigators

Messages in a bottle

I am working my way through the thousands of messages in a bottle I received as part of the Have Your Say staff survey and will be addressing some each week in my message.

Please address too many budget cuts to staff.

Can I strongly advise you to ask to meet with your clinical leader or the executive of your directorate to discuss your specific concerns here. Metro North hasn’t had ‘budget cuts’ in the last five years. We have received growth funding and other specific funding to support our COVID response. Our workforce has continued to grow each year and in the 23/24 financial year we have a budget of $3.99B and staff FTE of 18,965.

Food for thought I believe everyone has the right to be treated as an equal regardless of their scope or qualifications. There are always ways to improve in this area and it starts with communication and education.

Every one of us, regardless of our roles, is contributing to Metro North’s overarching goals and priorities. Every role should be playing a part in delivering high quality patient care, whether you’re at the frontline or providing support. Our Metro North values apply equally at all levels of the organisation and across all qualifications so we should all be treated with and be treating others with respect.

Compassionate Care Principles

This week I participated in a clinical governance workshop with people from across Metro North. I challenged the group to see who could list any of the Metro North Compassionate Care Principles which should be underpinning all our care decisions. Over the next few weeks, I’ll flesh out each principle with some examples in my weekly message.

The seven core principles of our care are:

• Principle 1: Flexible visiting hours across Metro North inpatient facilities.
• Principle 2: Care in the right setting according to patient wishes.
• Principle 3: Timely communication and reporting.
• Principle 4: Co-designed care.
• Principle 5: Good navigation and knowledge sharing.
• Principle 6: Patient centred holistic care.
• Principle 7: True and adequate informed consent.

I strongly encourage you to think about how you are applying these principles in your day-to-day work.

Herston Health Precinct Symposium

This week the Herston Health Precinct Symposium brought together researchers, clinicians and innovators from across precinct to share ideas. Congratulations to the winners of the symposium awards:

• Professor Lawrie Powell AC Early Career Researcher Award: Nicholas Green, Optimisation of a Semi-Automated Custom HTO Surgical Guide.
• Professor Jeffrey Lipman AM for Best Translational Research into Practice Award: Bree-Yana McConnochie, Enteral Probiotics for the Prevention of Ventilator Associated Pneumonia in Mechanically Ventilated, Adult ICU Patients.
• Dr Stephen Morrison Award for Best Clinical Research: Professor Nicole Marsh, Securing Central lines in Intensive Care: A multicentre randomised controlled trial (RCT).
• Professor William Egerton Award for Best Discovery and Innovation Research: Shashwat Mishra, Automation of the 3D modelling and corrective anatomical measurements workflow in Lower Limb Malalignment.

Kind regards,

Jackie.