Ms Nicole Tolhurst1
1Clinical Excellence Commission and Healthshare NSW, St Leonards, Australia
Biography:
With over 30 years of experience in healthcare, I bring extensive expertise and leadership to the field of Infection Prevention and Control. As program clinical lead I have provided expert support and advice across NSW Health.
I continue to enjoy the diverse nursing and IPC career.
Abstract:
Tackling An Innovative Statewide Auditing Program with Patient Transport Services HealthShare NSW
Background
Patient Transport Services (PTS) provides service for patients requiring transport to, or from, a healthcare facility, rehabilitation unit and the community that do not need a time critical emergency ambulance within New South Wales. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted a lack of visibility of compliance to Infection Prevention and Control (IPAC) and lack of processes to identify gaps in knowledge, education and IPAC engagement within this service. Implementation of such an audit program has provided an important pathway to measure compliance but also to bridge the gap to knowledge and engagement.
The aim is to implement a structured auditing program and evaluate IPAC processes within PTS with the main objective of identifying and addressing gaps and keeping staff, patients and the community safe. Also providing an important tool in measuring staff knowledge and compliance so changes could be integrated into the PTS safety system.
Method
Three audit tools were developed October 2021 with schedules (end of shift clean, drop off and pick up). Mentoring and audits conducted on the Quality Audit Reporting System (QARS), non-compliance identified, action plans created.
Results
Audit results are consistently high and hand hygiene that was recently implemented are above the national benchmark of 80 percent.
Conclusion
Increase awareness through continual education sessions and communication of results to staff, highlighting the need to follow IPAC processes to achieve staff and patient safety, achieving system level improvements.