Making positive change for patient safety

For Community and Oral Health Safety and Quality Coordinator Jodi Dwyer meeting standards is not just about ticking a box.

“It’s about providing safe and effective care and supporting the services to take on sustainable practices to ensure that they provide safe care every day,” Jodi said.

And, if the recent flawless results of the short notice assessment by the Australian Council of Health Care Standards are anything to go by, Community and Oral Health (COH) patients and residents are in very safe hands.

“Logistically, it is always a challenge to educate dispersed services across more than 30 community facilities on how short notice assessment would roll out,” Jodi said.

“The Safety and Quality team rolled up their sleeves and supported service lines by helping staff understand the questions that they would be asked and helped them talk easily to the assessors.

“It was important for staff to understand the why – why we go through the accreditation process and how important it was for them to share the patient stories, as these stories shine through.

“Going through accreditation the Safety and Quality team are the quiet achievers in the background – supporting services showcase the work that they do.

“Moving forward, the short notice assessment challenge will be how we maintain our standards and continue to be accreditation ready every day.”

Jodi is an experienced and highly respected nurse who has worked across many care settings including the Redcliffe and Caboolture Hospital Emergency Departments, Interim Care and more recently the Nurse Unit Manager for Gannet House.

“As a nurse on the floor I didn’t really know how safety and quality supported my role. You can understand clinical tasks but fitting all this together requires understanding all of the pieces of the puzzle,” Jodi said.

“As a Safety and Quality Coordinator, I love working and partnering with staff and champions on the floor to support them understand and influence their knowledge of safety and quality – providing the gap I had as a clinician.

“For me it is about moving safety and quality to the bedside, showing staff how to do safety and quality well. It is also about reflecting on our own experiences on the frontline.”

At COH, there is a highly professional and diverse Safety and Quality team who partners with service lines to create a dynamic safety culture.

“Safety and quality is so diverse,” Jodi said. “It is more than just audits, but covers many aspects including infection control, feedback at the bedside, emergency management, consumers liaison – it is so much more than just accreditation.

“We currently have Safety and Quality expressions of interest out there for leave and backfill and I strongly encourage frontline staff to apply.

“We make the frontline work better and safely. Safety and Quality is not about sitting behind a desk but going out to service lines to guide staff.”

Each year, Community and Oral Health (COH) connects tens of thousands of people to community-based health care needed following their hospital stay.

COH provided more than 250,000 patient appointments or visits in the home, at our oral health clinics, health facilities, mobile dental vans and bedded services, as well as to residents at our residential aged and disability care facilities.