Mrs. Magdalena Di Giacomo1
1Townsville Hospital And Health Service Queensland Health, Townsville, Australia
Biography:
Maggie is a Clinical Nurse Consultant for Infection Prevention and Control, Townsville Hospital and Health Service.
She is a credentialled Infection Control Professional with over 9 years of dedicated experience. Her commitment to ongoing quality improvement drives Maggie’s dedication to advocate for robust and innovative infection control practices.
Abstract:
Background
Infection control practitioners spend 49% of their time undertaking routine infection surveillance activities. This project aimed to develop and pilot an automated dashboard to i) reduce ICP time spent on daily surveillance activities, ii) increase the capacity of ICP time to provide a risk based and consumer focussed service.
Method
We conducted a quality improvement activity across the Townsville hospital and health service (THHS) in Queensland, engaging stakeholders from the infection prevention and control, data analytics, iEMR and the HBCIS Queensland program teams. Using a process of iterative co-design we created an infection control dashboard for the THHS. We implemented and evaluated the dashboard over a nine-month period. Data was collected pre and post implementation including time taken to conduct daily surveillance activities and number of face-to-face patient education sessions. Qualitative comments and feedback were collected and summarised from nursing and medical clinicians across the THHS.
Results
Over a 9-month period, two infection control dashboards were implemented across 10 facilities. Daily surveillance time reduced by 3 hours, leading to an increase in capacity to provide face-to-face support to consumers; this contributed to a 70% increase in documented face-to-face patient education sessions. Clinicians reported improved visibility of vital patient information, increased at the elbow support and a streamlined patient flow journey.
Conclusion
This project showed decreased surveillance burden and improved patient outcomes through use of an automated dashboard, increasing capacity of ICP time to provide a consumer focussed service.