Dr Maxine Power Masterclass a huge success!
Our last free Masterclass on hospital avoidance strategies during a pandemic was extremely popular with our members.
More than 750 ACHS members and Ambulance Service staff around Australia enjoyed listening to Dr Maxine Power of North West Ambulance Service, UK in our free Masterclass held on 14 October.
North West Ambulance Service introduced new initiatives to change their delivery model and evolve to meet the challenges of the COVID pandemic by better managing resources, specifically frontline staff.
“The premise of these initiatives was to increase those rates of non-attendance in the hospital by capitalising on early triage routes”, Dr Power said.
Critical to underpinning the initiatives were:
- supporting ambulance staff and enhancing their services by introducing a full ’Command and Control’ structure,
- collaborating with the military, police and students and rapidly upskilling staff to drive emergency vehicles,
- creating a ‘Patient Public Panel’, working with 160 members of the public, to consider how to re-design services,
- integrating care systems (such as ICU).
Dr Power shared the data outcomes of the initiatives and the impact on the relevant geographic areas to better understand the variations. “Understanding the data and their variations is the key to opening the door to improvements,” she said.
“As we shared the granular detail of results across the region, we were able to connect those people doing well with those who were keen to improve. And the results were not dissimilar to speed dating – people wanted to get on with the changes!
“Tests of change are quite a rapid way of challenging perceptions. This is the foundation of all the work we do in quality improvement,’ Dr Power said.
We thank Dr Power and Dr Joy Furnival, who also contributed, for their thought-provoking and conversation-starting brilliant presentation.
