January 27, 2023Firstly, what’s your coffee order?
Latte.
Tell us about your Northern Health journey.
I have been at Northern Health for 5 years now in the Chief Nursing and Midwifery Informatics Officer role.
What do you like most about your role?
My work is varied and allows me to interact with our nurses and midwives from all wards, departments and campuses. In this role, I serve as the bridge between nursing and midwifery practitioners and Electronic Medical Record (EMR) staff in the development of EMR design and system implementation. I work with clinical and leadership to interpret clinical practice and organisational priorities to ensure we design safe digital enabled workflows that support the nursing and midwifery profession.
Are you excited about the EMR going live in September 2023?
Yes, very excited! It has been a long time coming and there have been many nurses and midwives at Northern Health that have helped design this system, so it will be fantastic to see it in use.
What are some of the benefits we will see when the EMR goes live?
By implementing the EMR at Northern Health, we will see many benefits across the organisation. The realisation of benefits is a principal reason investment is made or change implemented. Whilst there are many expected benefits, the organisation has endorsed a Benefits Program of work that focuses on 15 Benefits. One of the benefits the organisation has decided to measure is ‘Reduced Adverse Drug Events (ADEs)’. By implementing the electronic medication management module, it will not only support the reduction in ADEs but should also provide the following positive outcomes:
- Improved medication administration safety
- Reduction in transcription errors
- Reduction in adverse drug reactions associated with prescribing errors
- More efficient medication reconciliation and easy identification of previous ADE’s
- Reduction in administration errors associated with drug chart legibility and non-generic prescribing
- Prescribers are alerted to potential drug interactions and known allergies, which may impact mortality, morbidity and/or length of stay measures
What are some things people don’t know about you?
I live on 10 bush acres just outside of the Yarra Valley. Our property backs onto Kinglake National Park and is a wildlife corridor, allowing native animals safe passage to move around away from the roads. Our principles at home are to be as sustainable as possible and we work towards this by operating a large solar power system, use of tank water only, a residential worm farm that processes all black and grey water on site and our produce garden which provides fresh food for the family.
