Felicity Topp, CEO, Peninsula Health

I engaged Cathy Balding to guide and advise me, our board, executive and quality team on creating a quality and safety framework that was meaningful and attainable  to all our employees. I have found over the years that we have made quality and safety an enigma by using terms such as ‘person centred care, KPIs, PDSA, sentinel events, short notice survey’, the list goes on.

To the nurse, doctor or allied health clinician at the bedside, in clinic or out in the community, what does all this mean every day when delivering care?  Quality then becomes what the quality unit does -  and it gets really busy when we have to do this thing called ‘accreditation.’  My vision as the Chief Executive was to have every single person working or volunteering  in our organisation understand how their role improves the quality of care and experience of all the people attending our services. Through Cathy’s strategic quality system we have taken over 1200 staff  through a process of how they can contribute to ‘Peninsula Care’ which is ‘safe, effective, personal and connected.’  

Our staff now know how they make the difference at the point of care, whether it be our kitchen team, our support services, nurses, doctors -  all our staff. We continue on the journey of embedding our framework and processes within daily practice so we are ready at any time for what was once that ‘accreditation’ enigma to be feared.  We are now “accreditation ready” every day.