This week is Canadian Patient Safety Week, offering the opportunity to highlight safety in hospitals across the country. Although safety is top of mind this week, the safety of everyone who works and receives care at Southlake is our top priority every day of the year. That’s why, in consultation with our staff, our union partners and our Joint Occupational Health and Safety Committee, we developed and are continuing to implement strategies to create the safest possible environment for everyone at Southlake.
Below are some of the actions Southlake has completed over the past several years and continues to implement to ensure our hospital remains safe for everyone who comes through our doors.
Safety for patients:
- We continue to focus on our five patient safety priorities, which are:
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- use two person-specific identifiers to confirm that patients receive the medication, service or procedure intended for them.
- complete medication reconciliation on discharge, providing a Best Possible Medication Discharge Plan so patients know which medications to continue and which ones to stop, helping to keep patients safe once they leave the hospital.
- reduce falls by encouraging patients to wear non-slip socks, use mobility aids and identifying patients at-risk of falling, helping to increase quality of life, prevent loss of mobility and pain for patients, and reduce length of stay.
- improve information on discharge by providing patients material on what to expect based on their circumstance, what to do if they are worried about their condition/treatment, and what medication they should be taking.
- reduce pressure injuries while in our care by changing the position of patients, encouraging mobility, decreasing use of briefs, and having proper bed surfaces.
Safety for all:
- Southlake has continued our universal masking policy, proper use of personal protective equipment and focus on hand hygiene to support our infection, prevention, and control efforts.
- Increased physical security coverage throughout the hospital.
- Safety training and education for all staff during orientation.
- Implemented a new electronic incident management reporting system, an easy way for staff to report and follow up on safety incidents.
- Monthly safety inspections on units with our Joint Occupational Health and Safety Committee to identify any potential safety hazards.
- Implemented a daily safety and risk call with leaders across Southlake to bring forward any quality or safety concerns.
- Daily audits on hospital units for proper wearing, and safe donning and doffing, of personal protective equipment.
- Launched the Ambassador Program with our security services partner; an innovative approach to proactive de-escalation and partnership between the clinical and security teams in our Emergency Department.
- Opened the Emergent Mental Health Assessment Unit, which provides for easy redirect from the Emergency department to support patient and staff safety.
- Encourage staff to engage in safety conversations by reinforcing awareness, including Southlake’s whistleblower policy where staff can anonymously report concerns.
Safety for staff:
- Launched comprehensive violence prevention and intervention training for all staff to provide them with skills to reduce the risk of harm when treating potentially aggressive patients.
- Hired a dedicated workplace violence prevention and safety officer to work full time with frontline staff and managers.
- Refreshed our Workplace Violence Prevention Committee.
- Adopted leading best practices for identifying and flagging potentially violent patients to staff, physicians and volunteers.
- Continue to deploy safety pendants to all staff, which send signals to our security team so that responses to potentially risky situations can happen immediately.
Southlake continues to work in collaboration with our union partners to promote and maintain a safe workplace. We encourage everyone to treat each other with respect and work together to make our hospital as safe as possible for staff and patients.
