OPEN MIKE with Anne Trafford
Vice-President Quality, Performance and Information Management, and Chief Information Officer our patients and staff safe. Our goal is to prevent harm to our staff as well as patients, building a singular culture of safety. Happy spring! Every April, St. Michael’s refreshes our priorities and targets for improving the quality and safety of our care. St. Michael’s comprehensive quality strategy for 2017-18, available at www. stmichaelshospital.com/quality, is the blueprint for all of St. Michael’s quality improvement activities. It includes 2017-18 Quality Improvement Plan targets, which are the pieces of the strategy that we believe we can achieve within the next 12 months. The strategy focuses on three central dimensions of the patient experience, summarized in three simple statements from our patients: “Protect me from harm,” “Use my time wisely,” and “Use my knowledge, build my knowledge.” Protect me from harm Above all, St. Michael’s first responsibility and priority is to keep
This year, we will focus on protecting our patients from hospital-acquired infection through consistent hand washing; reducing unnecessary, daily blood tests for inpatients; preventing staff injury from lifting and repositioning patients; and developing better strategies for measuring and tracking our performance related to hospital-acquired pressure ulcers and bed sores, as well as medication safety. Use my time wisely Our patients’ time matters. Inefficiencies in our patient flow system undermine the patient’s experience as well as the hospital’s quality of care. Our patient flow priorities are reducing waits in the Emergency Department for non-complex patients; reducing delays transferring “alternate level of care” patients to their next destination; and preventing unnecessarily long stays for
mental health inpatients. Use my knowledge, build my knowledge This theme is born of an exciting, growing movement within St. Michael’s and across health care to put patients and their families at the centre of health-care planning and delivery. The hospital’s new Family Presence Policy is an exciting example of this philosophy coming to life at St. Michael’s. This year, we will work to empower patients with the right information for a smoother transition home; evaluate and further build our patient/public engagement strategy; and develop better processes for collecting and learning from health equity data. It’s a big year ahead and St. Michael’s is well positioned to take on the challenge. I want to thank the staff, physicians, patients and families who contributed their expertise and energy to the development of this year’s quality priorities. Together, we can provide the best possible experience for our patients and families.
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Hignell enlisted the help of volunteer Jannie Henkelman, a NICU baby-cuddler, to run the new program. Together, they got Fabricland to donate all of the materials. Henkelman co-ordinates the distribution of patterns and materials to volunteer sewers, as well as the pickup of finished products. A crew of five assembles cloths by diagonally folding 10 by 10 inch squares of cotton flannel, pre-cut by Henkelman, and sewing all of the open edges except for a small hole through which the cloths will be turned inside out. But first, to keep infants safe, excess material at the corners is trimmed, thereby assuring flat, rounded corners after inversion. Then the opening is stitched shut. Each cloth
takes about eight minutes to sew. For infection control, the cloths are laundered upon pickup before being placed into plastic bags that get added to the NICU’s Family Welcome Packages. The crew has already made 250 cozy cloths. But with 30 admissions per month to the NICU, Henkelman said the need for more is great. Volunteering for this task is rewarding, said Henkelman. “How satisfying it is to be able to do something as simple as this to enhance the bonding process between preemies and their parents.”
To help make cozy cloths, email Jannie Henkelman at cozycloth.smh@gmail.com. APRIL 2017 | IN TOUCH | 2
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