What does Quality in Action mean to Vancouver Acute and Community staff? That was the question being answered at yesterday’s All Staff Forum, where colleagues presented some of the innovative work they are doing to enhance patient and client care.

“Quality is what we do every day. It’s what we do to hopefully make a difference in the lives of the patients we care for,” said Nancy Desrosiers, Executive Director of Quality & Patient Safety. “In the healthcare industry our goal is to decrease medical errors, and we do that by looking at processes and suggested changes that we measure over time. Similar to your day to day assessments in homecare or on a unit, you need to be flexible and adaptable to change your care plan on a dime, and that is considered quality improvement.

In a rapid fire presentation format, where speakers only had five minutes to explain their quality improvement initiatives, the audience listened to five exciting developments currently happening within VCH:

• George Scotton discussed expanded partnerships with the Vancouver Police Department in mental health services, such as Assertive Community Treatment, Mental Health Emergency Services and Assertive Outreach Teams.
• Jenifer Tabamo and Doris Bohl talked about the Sepsis Inpatient Pilot Project and a sepsis screening tool that increases early identification of sepsis in patients.
• Caitlin Etherington explained about the new peer framework in the DTES 2^nd Generation that measures consistency and fairness of counselling and treatment services for all clients involved.
• Sandra Li and Allana Leblanc chatted about early progressive mobility methods for ICU patients that have decreased average length of stays from seven to three days.

Staff asked thought provoking questions at speaker panel

After the presentations, Barbara Drake, regional manager of the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program, asked a number of panel questions to the speakers. Doris Bohl explained what contributed to the success of the sepsis inpatient pilot project: “We had a very strong quality improvement team that supported the project. They supported in the education. We also had multiple inservice teams and tokens and lanyards and celebrations for the work that was accomplished.” Caitlin explained some of the barriers and challenges she faced in the peer framework: “Our partners have a level of expertise in this field that far exceeds our own knowledge, so we are trying to find this balance of engaging and sharing ownership but also moving at a pace that is reasonable.”

At the end of the panel a variety of questions came from the audience to each speaker that helped to create further discussion and in depth conversation of ideas and methods for quality improvement.

At the end of the fair staff enjoyed the coffee and cookies provided and perused some of the quality poster booths, where presenters of the upcoming Quality Forum discussed their projects.

Missed the ASF? You can still watch what happened!

If you missed the ASF you can still watch the amazing presentations and listen to the panel Q and A by viewing the webcast available.

We also would appreciate your thoughts on future ASF topics by completing our survey.