At Eastern Health we greatly value your feedback. Thank you for taking the time to tell us about your experience of care. Wherever possible, we try and make improvements based on feedback.
Wellington House – Turning Point
YOU SAID
Clients have concerns over the welfare of their beloved pets, with often no one able to look after them as they admit to Wellington House to improve their health and get clean and sober.
WE DID
Our newest Peer Worker, Jess, contacted all the charitable animal organisations in and around Melbourne, asking if they had the capability to look after clients’ animals or find a “respite” home until they are discharged from Wellington House, an inpatient addiction withdrawal service.
This resulted in Jess developing a list so staff could contact such organisations, relieving pressure and unnecessary stress for the client’s worrying about who will be looking after their precious fur babies during their inpatient stay. This was a really great initiative and one in which both Client’s and staff were so happy to be involved.
Intensive Care Unit – Box Hill Hospital
YOU SAID
Your staff are not well skilled in the use of the Megabee device (an assisted writing tablet to aid frequent communication with people who have no, or impaired, ability to speak and cannot write legibly) to help patients like me paralysed from Guillain-Barr�e9 Syndrome communicate
WE DID
We underwent a review of our strategies to help patients like this. We concluded that all members of our team should indeed be more comfortable and adept at using the Megabee. We produced a carefully edited instruction video and incorporated this in an iLearn course that has subsequently been completed by 96% of our front line ICU staff.
We are much more likely to reach for the Megabee now and many patients have benefited. Perhaps the best example of this is John and his family. John was recently in Box Hill ICU where he suffered through 2 months of agonising whole body paralysis. For much of this time he was fully awake and aware.
The team quickly reached for the Megabee, which rapidly become John’s primary way to interact with everyone – nurses, doctors, PSAs and even his family. In fact, we gave John’s pregnant wife our instruction video and she rapidly became the most capable Megabee user we have ever worked with. John and his family are incredibly grateful for the work our team has put in to get as comfortable as we have with the Megabee. Much of the credit for this happy story is owed to the patient who first gave us the critical feedback in the first place.
Information Integrity and Analytics – Release of Information
YOU SAID
An Eastern Health doctor contacted Release of Information to see if a discharge summary could be provided in a format a blind patient who lives alone could read themselves.
WE DID
We liaised with the EMR team and gave the blind patient their discharge summary in a PDF format that could be used in conjunction with the patient’s accessibility enabled PDF reader. This allowed the patient to read their own discharge summary independently and has made us aware of technical mechanisms we can use to assist blind patients in this way in future.
Koonung Clinic, Doncaster Continuing Care Team & Duty – Adult Mental Health
YOU SAID
The mother of a long term consumer requested a Male Case Manager for her 30 year old son.
WE DID
The catchment of Doncaster CCT does not currently have a male case manager in their staff mix. The Service Manager and team leader organised the clinic assistant duty worker whom is a male nurse, to be the face of the consumers’ team and have direct client contact/interaction with male consumer on his fortnightly treatment interventions.
The current female Case Manager and Team Leader still work with the client’s mother and complete the ‘behind the scenes’ case management workload. #TeamworkAgileworkforceRoleflexibility
Intensive Care Unit Box Hill Hospital
YOU SAID
During Covid-19 many of our patients and their families highlighted the difficulties they were experiencing in being separated and not being able to communicate.
WE DID
The ICU Patient Experience Group (IPEG) designed an email to be sent to every NOK on a patient’s admission to ICU. The email acknowledged the visiting restrictions and offered support to families including an option to video call patients and to send video and audio clips for patients that were unconscious. Over the 2020 COVID period we sent 654 initial emails to families and had phenomenal feedback from patients and families re: the support offered in such a difficult time.