Mrs. Arene Smuts1, Mrs. Emina Ryan2
1SWSLHD, Bowral, Australia, 2SWSLHD, Liverpool, Australia
Biography:
I completed a 4-year Diploma in general, community, psychiatric nursing, and midwifery in South Africa. Since then, I completed post-basic courses in peri-operative, infection prevention, exposures and immunization. In South Africa I worked as a midwife, and an ophthalmic peri-operative nurse. I came to Australia as a scrub/scout at Westmead Hospital for 2 years before returning to South Africa and continuing in peri-operative nursing and Infection Prevention. In 2012 we immigrated to Australia working in the Infection Prevention unit at Liverpool hospital. In 2015 I started at Bowral & District Hospital as the Infection Prevention and Staff health CNC.
Abstract:
Background
South West Sydney Local Health District (SWSLHD) consists of five hospitals, community, dental and psychiatric services. The infection prevention (IP) services in the different hospitals and services created resources independently from each other including webpages on the individual services websites.
One central IP website was envisioned for all the SWSLHD IP services.
Method
Bowral & District hospital (BDH) already had an IP website with different webpages, most of the other IP services each had a webpage on their services websites.
The SWSLHD website was set up similarly to the BDH website with different pages, for example:
Homepage with links back to each services own IP page or site. Separate pages were created for the services without already existing webpages on the main IP website.
Policies, guidelines, and procedures page with links to all National, NSW Health, SWSLHD and individual service IP policies.
There is also a Hand hygiene, a Patient factsheets, Education, Contacts and Posters page with posters to facilitate consistency across SWSLHD.
The site is maintained by SWSLHD IPs and can be updated and improved while keeping it live.
Results
The website is now available to all SWSLHD staff as a resource site for quick access to infection related policies, patient factsheets, posters, and other resources.
Conclusion
The SWSLHD Infection Prevention website has become a useful resource to staff, containing the most up to date SWSLHD resources. It can be accessed by all staff from any SWSLHD computer and have removed the need for IP resource folders.