VCH team wins first prize at Safety Den
The BC Care Providers Association’s annual conference in Whistler on May 29 did something unique. They created the “Safety Den,” an event for the change agents in healthcare to pitch their innovative ideas to promote staff and patient safety. It applies the competition of Dragon’s Den (a CBC TV show) to make it fun and engaging.
Earlier this year, the Safety Den put out a call for submissions. The submissions received this year were very creative and showed the commitment and passion that employees and organizations have for creating safe workplaces. A committee reviewed the submissions, and narrowed it down to four finalists who presented on May 29 at the Safety Den. VCH was one of the four finalists and successfully won first place!
The VCH team
The team is from Older Adult Tertiary Mental Health Program, which is located on the fifth floor of the Willow Pavilion at VGH, and consists of:
- Lillian Hung, clinical nurse specialist
- Andy Au-Yeung, occupational therapist
- Corrina Helmer, unit clerk
- Levi Elija, total care worker
- Alice Ip, patient care coordinator
- Dr. M. Wilkins-Ho, physician
The winning project
The team pitched an innovative idea of using technology, an iPad to improve safety and quality of care for patients with dementia. It involves showing a pre-recorded personalized family video to the client prior to giving care. Their early results showed the use of iPad could lead to 77-93% reduction of responsive behaviours in patients with dementia, compared to baseline.
Lillian Hung says, “Our iPad project was one of the 4 finalists presented at the Safety Den. We answered tough questions asked by the Dragons. The Dragons were impressed by our idea as:
- It promotes patient safety – a one-minutes pre-recorded family video helps patients feel safe
- It prevents staff injury
- It improves quality of care by inviting family to become partners in care”
Congrats to the team for their win! Their $1,000 prize will be spent to scale up the iPad project.