August 20, 2012 - St. Joseph's Health Centre Toronto

connections
A
newsletter for the staff, physicians, volunteers, residents and students of St. Joseph's Health Centre
Put Patients First
St. Joe’s keep patients safe by
reducing falls with harm in first
quarter of the 2012-13 fiscal year
By Tanya Kavcic, Jr. Communications Associate
In fiscal year 2012-13, Quality Improvement continues
to be an ongoing priority that helps us continually find
new and better ways of providing quality and safe care
to our patients. It gives St. Joseph’s Health Centre the
ability to see our targeted areas for improvement and
chart our progress while clearly articulating our
accountability to our patients, staff and community. One
of the key Big Aim initiatives is to reduce the number of
patient falls with harm by 30 per cent from the
2011-2012 fiscal year. This has proven to be an early
success story for quarter one (the months of April, May
and June) as we have reduced our number of patient
falls with harm to 19 instances for the first quarter. This
represents a 24 per cent improvement!
“The Senior Leadership attributes this quarter’s
success to the diligent focus and attention to the
reduction of patient falls with harm of our employees,
physicians, students, and volunteers along with the
great support and guidance of the Falls Prevention
Committee,” said Wendy Steele, Chief of People,
Learning and Leadership and executive sponsor of the
patient falls with harm corporate initiative. “We thank
you and our patients thank you!”
“Last fiscal year we had 142 falls with harm. Our aim
this year is 99 falls with harm or fewer which translates
into just under 25 falls with harm per quarter so we
were well under our target for the first quarter,” said
Chris Ashdown, Physiotherapy Professional Practice
Leader and co-lead of our falls with harm initiative. “We
celebrated with a pizza lunch for the staff on 6M
because their unit had the greatest success in lowering
their falls with harm in the first quarter of this year
relative to the first quarter of last year.”
Falls are rated on a scale from one through four, from
least severe with no injury to most severe resulting in
death. In addition to team huddles following any fall,
The staff on 6M, the unit to have the greatest success in lowering
their number of falls with harm for the first quarter of the 2012-13
fiscal year, celebrate their accomplishment with a pizza lunch.
the two co-leads, Chris Ashdown and Joe Brubaker,
are meeting with patients and their families of anyone
who has experienced a falls injury to determine what
happened and why. “It’s a good opportunity for us to
interact with patients and their families to get their input
on how we can improve our efforts,” said Ashdown.
Additionally, the committee leads are conducting
weekly audits of our falls risk assessment tools to
determine if patients are at risk of a falls injury. The
current focus is on our inpatient Medicine program
areas as we know these units account for at least two
thirds of all our falls with injury.
In order to reduce falls with harm further, the Falls
Committee will be piloting a structured rounding
process – scheduled and frequent visits with patients –
to proactively meet patients’ needs to prevent them
from injuring themselves by independently doing things
they need assistance with. By regulating the time and
frequency of rounding, patients will know when they
can expect staff to help them to reduce the risk of falls.
Together with the ongoing commitment and focus by
staff, physicians, students and volunteers, we continue
to strive to reduce patient falls with harm.
St. Joe’s continues to Put Patients First by making the
reduction of patient falls with harm one of our few Big
Aim priorities for 2012/13. “Reducing the number of
falls injuries prevents pain and suffering for our patients
and minimizes their length of stay,” said Ashdown.
“Changes we made last year – using exit alarms, falls
mats and conducting team huddles after each fall – are
gaining traction which is a reflection on our improved
numbers.”
2 St. Joseph’s Health Centre – Toronto