Resources

This Perspectives Brief from the Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association’s Deeble Institute examines approaches to observations of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. The authors of this Perspectives Brief note that the Royal Commission ‘identified the need to improve the delivery of health care to meet the needs of older persons and their carers’ and that the ‘greater involvement of older persons and their carers in research to develop solutions was recommended.’

Dignity in healthcare, and particularly in the care of the elderly, is seen as a basic human right, as is the right not to be harmed in the course of care. But are these rights counteracting each other?

This article explores the relationship between the management of clinical risk and the provision of dignified care to older people on acute hospital wards in the NHS. It shows that the care relationship between staff and their patients can be negatively affected by risk management practices that seek to eliminate the inherent uncertainties of clinical care. Ironically, it seems the management of clinical risk can pose a challenge to maintaining dignified care for older people.  

A ready reckoner for evolving consumer engagement from ‘informing’ to ‘empowering’. Includes a meaningful ‘promise’ to consumers at each participation level that clarifies the outcome of achieving each engagement level.

Consumers’ perspectives and active engagement are critical to making health systems safer and more person-centred. Consumers, families, caregivers and the community can contribute towards improving care-related safety at the clinical (local), institutional (e.g., hospital, nursing home), community (e.g., primary care, home care) and national (in the development of national policies) levels of healthcare systems.

Involving patients and families in healthcare decisions about patient care and in hospital and health system policy/programs has been shown to hold many benefits for consumers and health services. This partnering of patients and families with healthcare professionals is often called “patient and family engagement”, although this term does not have a standard definition and may not describe the best practices for achieving partnership.

Where do we start to increase consumer satisfaction in a seemingly endless sea of consumer touchpoints? Sometimes we put a lot of time and effort into improving things with little satisfaction or ‘bang for buck’. Sometimes we focus on what we think the problems are from our interpretation of feedback data – which may or may not reap satisfaction benefits. There are also confounding factors such as consumer age and health status that can confuse and tilt results.

Partnering with consumers in the planning, delivery and evaluation of health services is an essential component of person-centred care. There are many ways to partner with consumers to improve health services, including formal group partnerships (such as committees, boards or steering groups). However, consumer and health providers' views and experiences of formal group partnerships remain unclear. In this qualitative evidence synthesis of 33 studies, the authors focus specifically on formal group partnerships where health providers and consumers share decision-making about planning, delivering and/or evaluating health services, looking at the pros and cons and what supports success.

In this webinar, Prof Steve Nicholls discussed the challenges and opportunities faced in opening Australia’s first dedicated Heart Hospital, integrating clinical cardiology services, research and education to create a centre of excellence.

In this webinar, Dr Katharine See shared her insights from her experience with implementing a digital care pathway for patients with lung cancer. She discussed the importance of collecting outcomes for impact, co-designing digital pathways with clinicians and consumers and lessons learned. 

The East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT) has dived deeply into partnering with consumers for service improvement. ELFT provides mental health and community services to a diverse population in over 100 community and inpatient sites.