Resources

The critical role of nurses in clinical care and quality is well recognised. This integrative literature review used the Joanna Briggs Institute (2020) Critical Appraisal Tools to examine nurse empowerment. Findings show that empowered nurses are more likely to deliver quality care through better decision-making, greater autonomy, and a stronger professional identity. This, in turn, supports improved patient outcomes, higher job satisfaction, better adherence to safety protocols, and fewer medical errors.

This systematic review explores the relationship between management practices and care quality, and finds that hospitals with management systems focused on effective operations, monitoring, target-setting and supportive human resources consistently outperform their peers on clinical quality metrics. We might call this the ‘clinical governance and management system’ within which both boards and executives must play their role for success. The authors describe roles for boards and executives.

Unleashing the Potential of our Health Workforce, led by Professor Mark Cormack, looked at the available evidence about health professionals’ ability to deliver on their full scope of practice in primary care. The review identified opportunities to remove the barriers stopping health professionals from working to their full scope of practice. It also drew on examples of multi-disciplinary teams where members are working to their full scope of practice to deliver best-practice primary care. Here, Mark presented some barriers and opportunities for health professionals to work at their full scope of practice.

We all understand that the essential role of patient experience in achieving successful healthcare delivery. Or do we? This article argues that really understanding the patient experience in such a way that it drives organisation-wide improvement,  requires a comprehensive view that captures the full range of interactions across a health service organisation, beyond completing a survey.

The importance of a safety culture, incorporating psychological safety and encouraging people to speak up, has been identified as critical to safe care for some time. However, achieving and maintaining such an environment can be challenging. This metasynthesis examines 15 studies to “review and synthesise qualitative research on nurses' experiences of speaking up”. 

Consumer-directed care, consumer-centred care, consumer-focused care - whatever terms are used in your sector - remains a work in progress across human services.  Some sectors have embraced and refined their approach to consumer decision-making and partnerships over many years; for others it remains a current challenge.  Aged care, in particular, demonstrates some unique barriers to partnering with consumers in their care, as highlighted by this systematic review which examined the evidence relating to consumer-directed care (CDC) in the aged care environment.  

In this webinar, Beverley Sutton (CEO of HEAL and AICG) will take a look at what is likely to impact care in 2025 and what you will need to do to support your staff to get the best from their professional development opportunities to improve patient outcomes.

In healthcare, keeping the people who are receiving care safe is not the responsibility of just one person, team, or department. It’s also not just the responsibility of those delivering the care—it falls on all of us. Whether you’re in leadership, at the point-of-care, or supporting the care process behind the scenes, you have a role to play in ensuring that the people being cared for in your organisation are safe.

Clinical deterioration is a key risk for any organisation providing clinical care. This qualitative study investigates how three organisational influences - leadership, culture and hierarchies -  impact healthcare professionals' readiness to raise concerns about patient deterioration. 

Over the past three decades, many health systems have sought to enhance care delivery. Despite various approaches such as quality improvement and lean management these efforts can fall short. Failures are often attributed to leaders and workers not doing the right things. This article argues that the real quality problems lie in the underlying systems staff work with. It says that human service organisations will be more successful if they focus on designing systems that support the delivery of high-quality care, rather than trying to fix the people working within them.