This Wednesday, 13 September, is World Sepsis Day – an annual event to raise awareness and reduce the worldwide burden of sepsis.

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that arises when the body’s response to an infection damages its own organs and tissues. This process, if left untreated or incorrectly treated, can lead to septic shock or death.

Many of those who do survive sepsis can face lifelong consequences which can impact their day-to-day functioning. According to the Global Sepsis Alliance, sepsis accounts for at least 11 million deaths worldwide each year. Yet, depending on the country and education, sepsis is known only to seven to 50 per cent of people.

To combat sepsis, Northern Health has an established Step on Sepsis team to promote the early recognition and appropriate treatment of patients at risk of developing or experiencing sepsis.

Since launching 10 years ago, the team has developed resources to assist staff in the management of these patients.

“These include the adult sepsis management guidelines, as well as the antimicrobial prescribing guide, which are both available on PROMPT,” said Yasmin Sungkar, Step on Sepsis Project Coordinator.

“The Step on Sepsis team conducts quarterly audits on the management of septic patients at Northern Health, and this data is reported back to the NSQHS Standard 3 committee.”

“Award winning research abstracts have also been presented at interstate and local conferences, as well as at Northern Health Research Week to showcase the success of the Step on Sepsis project over these years.”

During the month of September, the Step on Sepsis team is running a number of campaigns to promote sepsis awareness to staff and our community. Keep an eye out for display boards in the foyer of the Northern Hospital Epping and Broadmeadows Hospital.

You can also participate in an online sepsis quiz, where you have the chance of winning a coffee voucher.

To find out more about Step on Sepsis, please visit the Intranet. Further information and resources about the World Sepsis Day can be found here.

Featured image: Yasmin Sungkar, Step on Sepsis Project Coordinator and Danni Miatke, Infectious Disease and Antimicrobial Stewardship Pharmacist.

Today, we welcome Broadmeadows Hospital Unit 2 and 3 under the wings of EMR. Today also marks the end of week one EMR go live!

Lucia Bento, Site Director and Director of Nursing at Broadmeadows Hospital, recognised the importance of the preparation pre-go live.

“The preparation, organisation and lead up to EMR, is what we have found at Broadmeadows Hospital to be very important in the go-live implementation,” she said.

“The teams at Broadmeadows Hospital have done very well. The EMR team and super users have been supportive, enthusiastic and hands-on to ensure a smooth transition, well done to everyone!.”

Debra Bourne, Chief Operating Officer, said, “We have been receiving positive messages from clinical staff from transitioned wards. This is great to see and we are positive that we will do well when we go live with Northern Health Epping and Craigieburn Centre next week.”

From Tuesday, 12 September, the EMR will go live at Northern Hospital Epping. Followed by Craigieburn Centre from Thursday, 14 September.

Thank you for continuing to support each other.

#WeAreNorthern

Meet Tony McGillion, Divisional Director, Education and Training.

Q: Tell me about your career before you started at Northern Health earlier this year?

A: Gosh, at my age that could take a while! I trained as a Registered Nurse in the UK in 1985 then spent a couple of years working in Saudi Arabia, where I gained a great perspective on working and living with different cultures. I arrived in Melbourne in 1989 with one suitcase. I knew nobody but had a sense of adventure – fortunately I had a job and a Visa! I did my Critical Care Course at PANCH then specialised in the area of cardiothoracics for a few years across both public and private healthcare.

I furthered my education by doing an education degree then a Master of Health Administration. I also worked in education leadership roles for a few years including Clinical Nursing Education at both Cabrini Health and Austin Health. In 2015, I was seconded to the Department of Health and Human Services as a Senior Policy Advisor for Nursing and Midwifery Education and led the Nursing and Midwifery Workforce team.

At the end of this secondment, I went to La Trobe University as Associate Professor of Nursing, where I co-ordinated undergraduate research subjects and postgraduate leadership and management. I was also the Academic Program Coordinator for our Singapore transition degree program and led the La Trobe University/Melbourne Health Clinical School. I was lucky enough to have a number of research projects published during this time, including those focused on interprofessional education, occupational violence and aggression and the assistant nursing and midwifery workforce.

In 2021, I joined Western Health as Director of Nursing and Midwifery with the portfolio of ‘innovation’ and ‘leadership development’. Earlier this year I was lucky enough to join Northern Health as the inaugural Divisional Director of Education and Training. I have retained Adjunct Associate Professor roles at La Trobe University (School of Public Health & Psychology) and the University of Melbourne and volunteer my time after hours as the Victorian Chair for the Australian College of Nursing, a role that includes mentoring emerging nurse leaders nationally.

Q: You are our new Divisional Director Education – what does the job entail?

A: Many things but initially establishing the new division and the various supporting systems and processes as well as implementing and evaluating our Education & Training Strategic Plan. I believe that education is omnipresent and people will learn best when enabled to do so. We are all here to safely care for patients and consumers/clients and we do this as a very large team.

However, we tend to historically encourage learning in ‘separate siloes’ – the new division is an opportunity for greater collaboration using best practice educational principles. I see a large part of my role as supporting lifelong learning at all stages of professional and vocational careers, ensuring that education and training are front-loaded into key projects and priorities. My job also entails role-modelling the key elements of integrity, approachability and transparency and living the Northern Health values and providing advice to all staff to benefit their knowledge and skills.

Q: What do you enjoy most about your new role?

A: Getting to know people and getting out to all the other Northern Health campuses has been fantastic. You only get one opportunity to make a good first impression and I see myself as an ambassador for ensuring our values are lived. There are many present and future challenges that education and training are part of and it is these ‘challenges’ that fuel my every day.

Q: If you could describe Northern Health in a sentence, what would it be?

A: Northern Health is both understated and unpretentious – this is shown by simple things such as our name badges and logo.

Q: What has been your greatest achievement in life?

A: I would like to discuss both a professional and personal achievements. Professionally, I had the opportunity in 2017, to teach at Sichuan University in China for four weeks. My challenge was to talk about leadership using an interpreter whilst being culturally aware. This was an amazing opportunity and my reflections of this four-week period will also be positive. Personally, raising two very well-rounded boys to become men that I am proud of has been a significant achievement.

Today, we are going live with the EMR at Unit 1, Acute – BIPU, BIPU Aged, Operating Theatres, and Recovery at Broadmeadows Hospital. We had the first patient transitioned on Unit 1 at 9.21 am.

When asked if there are any go live key learnings, Jamie Duffy, Nurse Unit Manager, Unit 1 said, “As impossible as it may sound, we need to stay calm and relaxed to allow the EMR team and clinical transition team to transition patients to the EMR, and lean on our super users when help is needed.”

Key messages of the day:

• Bundoora Centre is going well on Day Three of EMR go live.
• EMR access: If you are experiencing EMR access issue, please ring the EMR help desk or find your green vested super user so they can escalate to the team. We will sort this out ASAP.

• To get access to the EMR, everyone at Epping needs to have their password synced: If you are a nursing/midwifery/doctor, make sure you perform a password sync before your ward goes live – click on this link and enter your new password. *You will need to be on the Northern Health network or via FollowMe Desktop to action this.
• Clinician swipe ID: Clinician ID (QR code) is only relevant for the following wards where there is a Welch Allyn integrated spot monitor (has a scanner) for Ward 15, Tower Wards Ward 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, ICU, Oncology Day Medical, and 230 Cooper Street Day Oncology Day Infusion.

• Patient transition: Make sure you have all your patient information and folders ready for transition. The team needs to be able to hit the ground running for a smooth transition.

Below are some photos of today’s go live:

From 1 September 2023, Victoria has a new Mental Health and Wellbeing Act (MHWA). The Act is the outcome of recommendations from the Royal Commission into Mental Health in Victoria.

A copy of the Act and more information is available on our Intranet as well as the Department of Health and Chief Psychiatrist website.

Associate Professor Vinay Lakra, Divisional Director of Mental Health, believes one of the main objectives is to reduce inequities in access to services. He says, “This is important, given long standing issues on equity and access.”

He lists below the top five changes which impact clinical practice:

1. A new set of principles which govern our decision-making process.
2. New forms
3. Chemical restraint – The new Act legislates circumstances regarding chemical restraint and the associated notification, monitoring and reporting of chemical restraint.
4. Changes to duration of Community Treatment Orders (CTO) – Under the new Act, the maximum duration of a CTO has been reduced from 12 to six months for all adults.
5. Availability of non-legal mental health services with an opt – out approach.

Vinay adds, “You are expected to consider the principles in all decision making under the Act. Please familiarise yourself with them and discuss with senior colleagues where needed. Please also make sure you use the new forms for all actions related to the MHWA.”

Today we are excited to bring Percy Cleland Wing (PCW) and KAW-Mental Health at Bundoora Centre under the wings of the Electronic Medical Record (EMR).

Today’s clinical transitions were completed before 2 pm. A big thank you to our clinical transition team, super users and Nurse Unit Managers (NUMs) for their support and hard work for the past two days.

Key messages of the day:

• If you are a nursing/midwifery/doctor, make sure you perform a password sync before your ward goes live – click on this link and enter your new password. This will take up to 24 hours to take effect. If you have already completed this during training, please disregard this message.
• Any discharges back to Northern Hospital Epping until they go live, the patient will return to paper at Epping.

Tomorrow, Unit 1, Acute – BIPU, BIPU – Aged, Operating Theatres, and Recovery at Broadmeadows Hospital will be going live with the EMR.

Some photos from today’s go live at PCW and KAW-Mental Health below:

The Clinical Leadership, Effectiveness and Outcomes (CLEO) team recently began a co-design project to recognise the value of lived experience and create safer, higher quality and more efficient care.

Known as the Co-Design with Consumers@Northern Health project, the project aims to create and implement a co-design framework and toolkit that will support clinicians and non-clinical staff to work confidently and effectively with consumers and/or carers with lived experience when designing or redesigning models of care.

This framework will provide staff with a convenient reference to equip them with the tools and approach to deliver improved experiences. The toolkit will provide access to training, education and resources and support from trained Northern Health co-design champions.

Patient outcomes are the ultimate goal for any healthcare intervention, and co-design plays an integral role in improving them.

Co-design is a collaborative approach that involves partnering consumers with lived experience together with stakeholders with professional experience to design and develop healthcare services, products, or solutions using shared decision making. It plays a major role in the future of effective healthcare, enables consumers who are most affected by a design or policy to become equal partners and ensures solutions are developed to meet the needs of the people they’re impacting.

The concept of co-design is rooted in the belief that the best healthcare solutions are those co-created with the people they are meant to serve. Dr Bill Shearer, Executive Director, Transformation Quality and Safety, said co-design is a powerful tool in continuing Northern Health’s transformation journey.

“The principles and methodologies of co-design are the perfect expression of our organisational values of safe, kind and particularly together,” he said.

The CLEO team joined forces with Patient Experience, Mental Health representatives and consumers to form a working group to identify and co-produce the structure and development of resource content.

As part of the project, 12 Northern Health staff members were invited to attend a two-day co-design training workshop in June that was led by Professor Sonja Pedell and Gareth Priday from Swinburne University Future Self and Design Living Lab.

The workshop covered co-design principles and methodologies, how to use co-design within Northern Health projects and quality improvement service redesign, how to run a co-design workshop with consumers with lived experience, and preparing co-design resources.

After the success of the first workshop, there will be another opportunity for staff to attend the training in November later this year. These participants will go on to become our Northern Health co-design champions.

Kathy Varnava, Patient Experience and Consumer Participation Manager, said placing patients and their families at the heart of the design process and fostering patient-centred care, healthcare providers can gain valuable insights into the experiences, concerns and needs of those aim to assist, leading to tailored and empathetic care.

“Consumers with lived experience who participate in co-design projects provide an opportunity to support any project design. Staff have the opportunity to listen and learn from the consumers experience, to enhance the planned goals and outcomes for projects being designed that ultimately will improve health care service delivery for all patients at Northern Health,” she said.

If you are interested in becoming a Northern Health co-design champion and attending the training workshop in November this year, please complete the expression of interest form.

Featured image: CLEO team.

After two and a half years in the making, the Northern Health Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is going live today at Bundoora Centre!

Ward 1 and Kath Atkinson Unit (KAW-Age) goes live today, followed by KAW-Mental Health and Percy Cleland Wing on 6 September.

During go live, staff will be supported by EMR Super Users and EMR Command Centre. There will be 24/7 support during the first two weeks of go live. Staff can also call the EMR Help Desk at 8345 5555 and press 2 for EMR when promoted.

Staff will also see the EMR support team roaming around Northern Health wearing bright colours. EMR Super Users will be in green vests, while the EMR team will be in blue polos. If you have any questions, make sure you reach out to one of us – we are here to help!

Leanne Shannon, Nurse Unit Manager – KAW-Aged, and Abhijith Anand, Nurse Unit Manager – Ward One, are both very excited for the EMR to go live in their wards. As super users themselves, they have been spending the past few months preparing their staff for today.

“Ward One and KAW being the first wards to go live, we were conscious of leading by example by proactively preparing for the EMR Launch. As superusers, we have laid the groundwork by encouraging honest feedback or concerns from our team, and demonstrating that all opinions are valued,” said Leanne and Abhijith.

Trish Aldridge, EMR Program Director, thanked everyone involved in the EMR journey.

“The exciting part of our journey is finally here, and we look forward to working with you as we operationalise our new system. Please remember we are here to support you, and together we will be very successful with our transition,” said Trish.

Tomorrow we will bring KAW-Mental Health and Percy Cleland Wing under EMR. Thank you to all the super users supporting the go live today!

EMR key messages for today:

• If your ward is not live with an EMR yet, use this time to do some final practice in the EMR
• Use the Quick Reference Guides to help you work through workflows
• Use the What Lives Where to understand what information can be found in the EMR versus on paper or other systems
• Use the eLearning modules to refresh your EMR knowledge

Some photos of go-live at Bundoora Centre are below: