Communicating for Safety Bulletin 2025
NSQHS Std 6: Communicating for Safety is the focus of the March 2025 Standard of the Month...
NSQHS Std Accreditation, Live Best Care,
NSQHS Standard of the Month: Communicating for Safety
Fourteen months after accreditation, Western Health has made accreditation readiness part of routine practice. Each month, we focus on a different NSQHS Standard, highlighting its key goals and importance.
The first focus is NSQHS Standard 6: Communicating for Safety, running from Monday 3 March to Friday 28 March. Keep an eye out for weekly key message communications and activities.
The Communicating for Safety Standard aims to ensure timely, purpose-driven and effective communication and documentation that support continuous, coordinated and safe care for patients.
Our Communicating for Safety Fab 5 team—made up of nursing, midwifery, medical, allied health, education, and quality experts—helps drive ongoing improvements in communication.
Western Health is already delivering Best Care, keep reading to learn more about our strategies, successes, and opportunities for improvement as we stay Accreditation Ready.
Kylee Ross
Co-Chair NSQHS Standard 6 – Communicating for Safety
NSQHS Standard 6 – Fab 5 Team Lead
Director of Nursing & Midwifery Informatics
Chief Nursing and Midwifery Informatics Officer
The Communicating for Safety Standard recognises that effective communication is needed throughout patients’ care and identifies high-risk times when effective communication is critical. It describes the systems and processes to support effective communication at all transitions of care: when critical information emerges or changes; to ensure correct patient identification and procedure matching; and to ensure essential information is documented in the patient’s healthcare record
What does it include:
Clinical Handover – Transferring patient care between healthcare providers or locations is a high-risk situation, with an increased risk of communication errors at these times. Effective clinical handover, which is structured and standardised, can improve patient safety.
Communicating with Patients and Colleagues – Effective clinical communication is two-way (or multi-way if between teams), structured and continuous communication that results in timely, accurate and appropriate transfer of information. For communication to be effective it needs to be tailored, open, honest, and respectful, with opportunities for clarification and feedback.
Patient Identification – Patient identification and the matching of a patient to an intended treatment is performed routinely in all care settings. Incorrect identification can result in wrong person, wrong site procedures, medication errors, transfusion errors and diagnostic testing errors.
Timely and Reassuring Communication in Emergency Care
“My wife experienced a serious medical episode, prompting us to call an ambulance. The paramedics arrived within 7 minutes, remaining calm, professional and caring throughout. After thorough assessments, they transported her to Sunshine Hospital, where she was quickly assigned a bed in emergency.
Upon my arrival an hour later, I was efficiently checked in and escorted to see her. Despite concerns raised in the media about the public health system, our experience was exceptional.
The staff provided outstanding care and clear communication, ensuring we felt supported. After multiple tests, a diagnosis was made, which, while not life threatening, was distressing. We are incredibly grateful for the compassion and professionalism shown to us.
____________________
This Consumer story highlights how clear, calm, and professional communication from paramedics, hospital staff, and emergency teams can reduce stress for patients and families during a medical crisis. The efficient handover of information, rapid assessment, and compassionate approach contributed to a positive experience, reinforcing the importance of effective communication in building trust and ensuring patient safety.
There are multiple improvement initiatives underway to improve Communicating for Safety. Do you know about these?
- Reviewing clinical incidents to identify communication themes and areas for improvement.
- Supporting the rollout of External Secure Messaging to enhance communication with GPs.
- Redesigning communication boards across clinical areas to improve team communication.
- Enhancing the nursing admission note and shift note to support clearer documentation and patient care.
- Engaged in the Western Health Care Connect project, offering summary views of consumer information.
- Ongoing education and training for staff to enhance clinical communication skills.
- Promoting consistent use of ISBAR/ISOBAR for handovers across all clinical areas.
- Embedding communication strategies into daily safety huddles and ward rounds.
- Supporting staff with resources and tools to improve documentation in the Electronic Medical Record.
- Monitoring and improving the timeliness of clinical documentation, including ward round and discharge summaries.
- Enhancing team collaboration through digital platforms.
- Implementing targeted initiatives to reduce communication-related incidents in high-risk areas.
We are proud of…
- Ongoing use of ISOBAR/ISBAR in handover processes supported by the updated Clinical Handover PPG and WeLearn module available to all staff.
- Ongoing use of clinical data in dashboards to support timely patient care. (e.g. overdue cannula).
- The extensive and active involvement of Language Services across Western Health to ensure patients and their carers and families are kept informed about clinical care and treatment planning.
- The Bacchus Marsh and Melton Electronic Medical Record and other digital systems go live in December 2024, brings more clinical services into one system to improve visibility of the patient journey and reduce information gaps.
- Ongoing use of routine audit tools (e.g., Consent, Handover) to guide improvement efforts.
- Standardisation of patient communication boards across Western Health
- Ongoing encouragement of staff to document ward round information in the Electronic Medical Record more promptly and effectively.
We are looking forward to…
- Expansion of the Western Health Care Connect project.
- Patient communication board redesign in the Children’s ward.
- New Footscray.
Our focus continues on…
- Ongoing education and training for staff to enhance clinical communication skills.
- Promoting consistent use of ISBAR/ISOBAR for handovers across all clinical areas.
- Embedding communication strategies into daily safety huddles and ward rounds.
- Supporting staff with resources and tools to improve documentation in the Electronic Medical Record.
- Monitoring and improving the timeliness of clinical documentation, including ward round and discharge summaries.
- Enhancing team collaboration through digital platforms.
- Implementing targeted initiatives to reduce communication related incidents in high-risk areas.
Patient Identification
Patient identification is crucial for providing safe and effective healthcare. It ensures that each individual receives the right care, medications, and treatments, while minimising the risk of errors.
The number of reported patient identification and procedure matching related incidents from February 2024 – January 2025 were relatively low. Reported incidents were near misses or minor incidents that caused no harm to patients.
Clinical Handover
Clinical handovers are vital for patient safety. They enable clinicians to exchange critical information about a patient’s condition, treatment, and needs when there is a change of staff shift or transitioning care. Effective handovers ensure continuity and prevent mistakes.
The ISBAR tool is a valuable asset in clinical handovers. It stands for Identify, Situation, Background, Assessment and Request. Western Health uses ISBAR to help clinicians communicate efficiently and ensures crucial information is passed accurately. It’s a simple but effective way to support best care. Following expansion of the use of our Electronic Medical Record (EMR), more staff and services are supported to consistently apply the principles of ISBAR to clinical handovers.
Seven hundred and sixty-six clinical handover audit results from March 2024 – February 2025 show good use of ISBAR and communicating of critical care information.
Discharge Planning
Planning for a patient’s discharge is important to make sure they get the best care after leaving the hospital. Good communication helps them move smoothly to home or another care setting. By organizing follow-up care and medications, we can support their recovery, prevent them from needing to return to the hospital, and improve their overall health. Discharge planning is a key part of good healthcare.
The Victorian Health Experience Survey (VHES) includes patient feedback on planning for discharge from our inpatient services.
The following graph shows the percentage of our patients who provided very positive responses to involvement in decisions about leaving hospital (adult inpatients). Our most recent rounded up results have matched the Statewide result of 78%.
Western Health continues to upload patient information to the My Health Record to the Australian My Health Record, a secure and centralised online system storing important health information for consumers. The Australian Digital Health Agency has launched its first consumer mobile application (’My Health’), which enables users to more easily access My Health Record information.
At a local level, Western Health continues to explore better ways of sharing health care information with the General Practitioners (GPs) of consumers using our health care services.
Clinical Audit is a quality improvement process that seeks to improve patient care and outcomes through systematic review of care against explicit criteria…where indicated, changes are implemented….and further monitoring is used to confirm improvement in healthcare delivery. At a local level clinical audit links to both clinical effectiveness and clinical governance.
This month we highlight the improvement initiative undertaken in Footscray and Sunshine Emergency Departments.
