Recommendations and action plan from the independent review into paediatric care at Caboolture Hospital

MEDIA RELEASE

Please attribute to Metro North Health Chief Operating Officer Jane Hancock:

Metro North Health has today released the recommendations and action plan from the independent review into paediatric care at Caboolture Hospital.

The review, which was announced in June 2023, was undertaken by an external panel to evaluate the way Caboolture Hospital provides care to paediatric patients and offer recommendations for improvement.

The report was provided to Metro North Health last week detailing recommendations in eight key areas.

The recommendations include recognition of paediatrics as a distinct specialty, community consultation on development of a new outpatient building, organisation restructure to provide paediatric knowledge to the Executive, development of a new paediatric medical staffing model, allocation of a paediatric triage or waiting room nurse, additional education and support to Nurse Practitioners, developing streaming models and developing a dedicated paediatric morbidity and mortality committee.

Metro North Health has accepted the recommendations and has addressed each of these in an action plan which has already commenced implementation.

Metro North Health Chief Operating Officer Jane Hancock, who commissioned the report, said the expanding Caboolture community had a growing paediatric population which would benefit from improvements being undertaken.

“Caboolture is a booming region that has a high population of paediatric patients, which we know is only set to increase, so it makes sense our services are specialised to support our youngest patients,” she said.

“The reviewers have identified that we need additional, specialised staffing for paediatrics across a range of roles and parts of the hospital, as well as more collaboration with consumers – and we remain committed to putting that in place, with many of these actions already underway.

“Additionally, the reviewers identified a need for more dedicated spaces suited to our paediatric patients, and we are proud to be actioning both an area for children to present to the ED away from adults, as well as a new $15 million paediatric outpatients building.

“We remain committed to continually improving the way we provide care to all patients, but particularly our paediatric patients following this important review.”

The report focusses on key areas for improvement including recruitment and staffing models, enhanced patient spaces and patient experience, and distinction between paediatric and adult care teams and spaces.

The full list of recommendations and action plan is available below:

ENDS