Coastal’s time to shine only 10 days away: Accreditation starts June 22
With Coastal’s 2015 Accreditation Canada visit less than two weeks away, it’s time for a look at what we learned from the various mock tracers that have been conducted at Coastal sites, as well as what we learned from previous surveys on other VCH communities of care.
Show off what makes you proud
One of the things that the Accreditation Canada surveyors will be listening for is a culture of learning and continuous improvement where team members take pride in the work they do every day. Coastal CoC has much to be proud of: it was evident from all our mock tracers that Coastal sites are delivering high quality care every day.
We saw passion, resourcefulness, and plenty of great examples of partnering with our patients and families to provide responsive, culturally safe, person-centred care. Initiatives like 48/6, Releasing Time to Care, and Four Cornerstones (to name just a few) have made a tremendous impact in supporting consistent best practices every day. Strong interdisciplinary team functioning and communication was evident everywhere we went. The support from our amazing regional content experts and professional practice team has been crucial to help our care teams “live and breathe” best practices in everyday care.
Ready to host
By now all the sites and units hosting accreditation tracers during our site visit will have received information about the logistics of their time with the surveyors, which includes all the considerations in this Site Visit Logistics Overview. If you are not sure about the arrangements for your areas, you can contact your unit lead or Serena Bertoli-Haley and Jody Sydor-Jones.
Check out the site visit schedule
Knowing the timing of the accreditation visits to your facility can be helpful for staff, physicians, as well as patients and visitors to feel engaged and not be taken by surprise if approached by a surveyor. To get a detailed view of the visits, look at the Coastal Site Schedule.
You can also find customizable posters to display on your unit, indicating the date and time when surveyors will visit:
Site visit notification poster – Powerpoint, landscape view
Site visit notification poster – Powerpoint, portrait
Making the best first impression
While our surveyors are coming to observe the good work that we do everyday, there a number of things that we can do to ensure that their first introduction to our sites makes a first impression that is consistent with the high quality of care that we provide. One of these things is ensuring that the physical environment at each of our sites is clean, tidy, and free of potential safety hazards.
Through the Four Cornerstones and Releasing Time to Care initiatives, we have seen how decluttering and organizing your unit can make a big difference in both quality of worklife and patient care.
As infection control is an underlying theme to the entire Coastal site visit, the infection control mock-tracers have seen excellent examples of this, in particular around:
- Ensuring clear separation of clean/dirty (linens, equipment, storage areas, etc.), such as adopting the “green is clean” system to distinguish each.
- Using indicator data to drive improvement, such as tracking, posting and discussing as a team Care Sensitive Adverse Events, infection rates, hand hygiene audits, etc.
Read more about other Tips for Hosting on the Accreditation site on VCH Connect.
Meet our surveyors
Curious about who our surveyors are? Surveyors are health care professionals who come from all over Canada and have a variety of current leadership positions in other health care organizations. They volunteer their time with Accreditation Canada because they believe in sharing knowledge with peer organizations to help each other raise the bar on quality. You can find our surveyors’ profiles here.